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#before i posted my retrospective

smileposting · 1 month

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so fucking funny that "has many human friends" is BY FAR the most popular option in that poll. like "neither yugo or day have ever made a hippie character without psychological problems before this point and i have no reason to believe they would start now. this bitch is friendless."

#psa #great god grove #thespius green #sorry btw to anyone who follows this blog and sees all my old “GRRRR I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS SMILE FOR ME” posting from 2021-2022 #before i posted my retrospective #i am now a nicer man <3

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dykedvonte · 1 month

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Discussing the NCR (Fallouts NV's Military Industrial Complex)

Fallout regularly discusses the idea of the military, its faults, its strengths, and most importantly, the psycho-social aspects of it regarding those who are members. We have seen a direct critique of the military generalized through the Enclave's overt nationalism, the hoarding of resources and indoctrination through the Brotherhood of Steel, and an almost eerily modern critique of the whole military-industrial complex through the NCR in New Vegas. In these series of posts, I will be focusing primarily if not exclusively on the last one.

The NCR we see in the game is strictly the military side of things and the depiction of active occupation during a time of eminent war, conflicting factions, and resource scarcity. It is in this we are missing a major factor that negatively affects the view of the NCR in the game and out: Civilian life along with citizen opinion on the military. While we do get Mojave civilian opinion on the military (often neutral or negative) we do not get those who are New California Republic citizens, not those who actually discuss the military more so not understanding the importance of the occupation and the President's choices.

We do not see how life is regularly lived by the average citizen as we have not seen New California in New Vegas, though, we get words and glimpses that the people are relatively content in the growing country minus the fact many people are not happy with the choice of encroaching on the Mojave. This most similarly reflects it's real-world application that many civilian citizens reject acquisition and war due to the economic effects it has on the country and the general violence/loss associated.

In this, we come to an issue of losing a perspective that is unique to the NCR as a military representative. The Brotherhood is notably a place where its active members are intertwined with its efforts, the young are raised to be scribes, paladins, etc... To where even if one is not fighting for The Brotherhood, they are still intertwined, it's propaganda is the life. The Enclave is even more cut n' dry in that it is mostly made up of government representatives. It is a group even smaller than the former, even more selective and intertwined that their propaganda IS a form of Eugenics. The NCR is unique in that there is a clear distinction between what is the military force, the civilian population, and the choice if one wants to be a part of the former.

There is a distinct difference in the cultures of the factions you are born into and those you must enlist or join (forcibly for some). While this is a long-winded way to get into the actual discussion I want to facilitate throughout these posts I wanted an initial background post to understand the aspects I am and am not exploring and explaining along with a hub post to link everything I intend to discuss in the coming days and weeks, starting with:

Why Do People Join the NCR?

...which will be discussed and linked back here like everything else regarding to this topic.

Links: TBA

#fallout #fallout new vegas #new california republic #these will be longer posts so be warned #prepare to be sick of me #you thought i could yap before #should pin this but Im just gonna link it in the pinned post to be concise and since this isnt just a fallout blog I just am just obsessed #plus I dont want it to be centered focus while im only half way through with the first word doc #the three posts are just the beginning on my disection of the NCR and how the MIC is shown through it cuase #like pls its so much more nuanced with the specific ways each character in the faction interacts #at least the ones you can talk to and have options for like i know so many people do independent route but its so intriguing and you get ho #the military takes advantage of people but also how the individuals try or believe they fight for a good cause cause of all the brain washi #like some perpetuate and others dont but its a system that just gets worse the higher you go like grrrrr #a take cant be nuanced if you refuse to look or discuss the reasonings of another side or generalize their arguement through a personal len #like you need to be objective at points cause while you may feel a way in an analysis the context explains why in canon they feel a way #a retrospective on tumblr??? shocker #was gonna make this one giant mega post but it wouldve been cluttered and i wanna space them out cause its a lot to work on in one sitting #and what if I want to be silly in between???

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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 8 months

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sometimes you forget not to pack a full bottle of shampoo

long nights full of counting headlights on the road and early mornings in airports

dawns on the ground and midnights in the sky

doesn't anyone want to keep me around?

I'm never asking (why)

carpets and windows I know like home but cleaned by somebody else

lost and found books and love note caffeine

held against windows and blankets and knees

how do I say "this takes too long" without it sounding far too mean?

"but maybe I don't want it to end" instead but only inside my head

nobody needs to hear

something out of a fever dream (but cold blown air instead)

((what if really I'm dead))

the only place that smells like home and where it's impossible to be seen

maybe that's the thing I'm wanting even if it's not what I need

~ L. T.

#like so much of my life has been spent in airports and I love them so much and this is just some of the feels of that #and before anybody gets concerned about the dead line: remember my circa post from the other day??#yeah as a middle schooler I had a bunch of (in retrospect) stress dreams about dying from cancer #and it was a time when I was doing some of the most air travel bc my grandpa had cancer the FIRST time #so this is partially calling back to that #as our family is... kinda going through that again #the shampoo incident actually happened btw. I was 16 and had to stop our whole group bc. I forgor 😔#hashtag uncanny wentzian poetry hours on main!! yeah babey!!!!#Lu rambles #Lu writes #living in liminalities #sometimes I think I could write poetry

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not-souleaterpost · 2 months

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The suprisingly bad plot of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

So I played this little fun Jet Set Radio clone (don't worry, it ties into the iceberg, so I wasnt technically procrastinating with video games-)

And the thing that stuck out besides the expected and fun is how the story was bad. In a surprising way - not as "oh I didnt expect it to suck so much!!!" But nah, what I mean is that it failed in a interesting way.

So what do I mean?

Well lets start with the whole setup "Oh yeah, you get your head chopper of and are actually just a random scrap metal robot controling a should-be lifeless body."

This is weird enough, but the fact that there is that much head switching and body stitching is just strange, you wouldnt really expect that from a skating game - hell it makes the casual light-bulb eye-switching from Naruto look tame in comparison.

Still, one could guess that its just a quirky thing (or more disturbingly that some of the developers gets off from it, like not the weirdest thing that exist) - just some funny detail to get attention and stand out.

But not, this thing actually is the crux of the whole "theme" and "charachter arc"

And its weird that this kind of game trys that, like if mario struggled with alcholism as a framing decice for generic platformer #64. Cause why do something that is overly ambitious and will fail?

Like this game sadly failed - the whole search for "roots" just felt kinda unatural and as if the people were living in a different world from you (like ok I get it the society literally is that much weirder, but I mean in a sense of just procecing information and emotions differently than a standard human would)

Just the fact that the charachters feel empty and you dont really connect with them or their relationships makes everything hollow - yet its weird that they tried at all - cause yeah in the end in Jet Set Radio, nobody gives a shit about that stuff, we just wanna ride the line with carefull cartoon charicatures.

Yet still the story decided to introduce plot twist, thematic foils, villians with pseudo-arcs, drama etc.

But somehow it doesnt get how at the same time it just doesnt work on a basic level - like after its revealed that not only that Faux guy killed Felix for a petty reason but also is about to kill all other Graffiti pals, its kinda irellevant that his "big secret" was "Oh your dad kept you out of trouble"

Yet the game plays that up as some final all revealing shocker, and even gives Faux a death mirroring Felix initial fall.

Also the whole arc of Felix is both weird and at the same time something that seems to be trying to say something - from starting as some random smart hair-dryer, to it being revealed that he secretly was a legendary skater with amnesia, and the whole "you are both now"-

I get kinda that they tried to say "look he died partly because of his arrogance and not letting others be close may sparked Faux's psychopathy", but still at the end it just doesnt click, you know what Im saying - the first thing after coming to life with no memory is "Oh I wanna paint the city, yeah why not and find my original head even if its not really mine" and then "Oh I guess I learned the power of friendship, even if we interacted minimally and in the end only the final thematic attack showed the use of bonds"

Like yeah, it showed literally moments how without other people he would be dead but still it was so subdued that its weird to do a whole story like that.

Especially a story as whacky as it - with a evil skater head taking over the police and brainwashing everyone to do his biding while becoming a giant centipede monster.

But the weirdest part is that it even had the whole meta-commentary about how yeah it IS a rip-off and one cant escape that, but like, we are totally something new too guys!

But guess the only really clever writting was the set up of that weirdo with angel wings actually having a absurd but believable reason for overhearing everything lol.

Yet other things just go nowhere - the sniper kinda disapears from the story, there are obvious times where you are just sent in circles for padding, etc.

And that last thing is kinda what leads me to my attempt to reverse engineer the story -

I would guess they started with the wacky desing of the main guy and someone though "but why do he be having that crazy head thou?"

And from that it sparked the idea, well he lost the head - and that connected with the whole "identity" thing especially when they had to think if they were making something creative or just puppetering the corpse of a dead, head-team less corpse of a faux legendary franchise (I dunno why I said faux, I like JSR, but I had to tie in the names)

The details came later, hence why DJ Cybers Mask is supposedly Felix's, even though it doesnt fit the latter - cause yeah the charachter designs werent made like that originally.

And thats why there is some weird padding and moments - cause of budget reasons some things had to be stretched, or maybe some things had to be used in a way to maximise what one has done and to not throw away some cool concepts, even if they clash.

Also, Im not knocking this associative way of coming up with storys, just speculating if thats how it all came together.

Still, the fact that the story isnt just "Yeah we are rebels and here are police, lets fight!" without any of the before mentioned window dressing is surprising.

And, being non-generic is a positive surprise, no matter the execution - so see, this "essay" wasnt shitting on this game afterall.

(also contrast for a simmilar story that is unsurprisingly bad - Gravity Rush - but I'll save that for another time, man I wish that games creative direction was done by someone else, cause the gameplay itself has moments of being more fun than a lot of things...)

Oh also the proof that this all relates back to the Soul Eater iceberg - see what I found (sadly not first, cause I googled and some redditor noticed 2 months ago, alas if I played this game way back I would have had this eternal glory, not shame😔):

And if you say: That's it? I expected more!:

Yeah...Sorry

#bomb rush cyberfunk #critique #story analysis #meta #surprisingly bad #not in a bad way #spoilers #soul eater iceberg #jet set radio #would tag jsrf but only played a few levels before the emulator lost my save #I suspect maybe the story will make more sense in retrospect of that ones plot like I heard it involves some alien squid being summonened #but the first jsr had the whole yellow rhino demon #so its not the absurdity thats weird more the try to be “emotionally complex” or to have some theme and message #but idk #yeah...sorry #also maybe there is some shit in the post game that makes it be more coherent but I already wasted enough time with videogames lol

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katyspersonal · 8 months

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When you started drawing? And how? Your works are so detailed and you feel the perspective so Q_Q Your drawing of old hunter from DLC is incredibly cool, I am looking respectfully

Oh- You mean this ( x ) one? Haha, yeah, it was an art commission, so I tried to give it the best I could... Though maybe using something I was paid for as a chance to practice perspective was a little irresponcible :') But the customer was happy, and this is what matters!

To be honest, I've been drawing for as long as I can remember...? I have quite the regrets about having basically none of my drawings from childhood survive, because it's been a LOT. But I've been going over the top with details, colors and settings since the age of like, 4-5 I think? I recall the caretakers at kindergarden REALLY loving my drawing of underwater, because I killed it with variety of fish and seaweed, despite having no references or knowledge! Also, fun fact - the very first art criticism of my life from me was towards a girl that colored every woman in her coloring book as blonde with blue eyes! I criticized her saying that there were other colors for people and that it was boring to be so samey dsfjjdshfsd Had to apologize, but.. yeah, it was the ultimate "I've always been this way" moment if I've seen one. :')

I used to visit classes to practice my drawing in elementary school, though! But it was mostly environment and animals, when I was more interested in drawing people at that time! The period from 8 to 12 years was the one where I kept creating OCs obsessively, and stories for them, and I've had like 6 comics I've been drawing and coloring at the same time (mostly comedy + fantasy)! I think what really inspired me to start creating the comics and characters that were mostly young girls with elemental powers was the Russian comic, Rainbow Knights x) (Журнал "Юла", припоминаешь? хд) I was obsessed with it, and I was obsessed with excuse to use more colors, effects and nature/elemental aesthetic. And yes, it was all trdaitional! I love using crayons, markers, pens and pencils for coloring. My clumsy hands were never good for paintbrushes... I moved more onto digital around the age of 14. It was when I've found a summer job, and earned enough money to buy a tablet! So.. I started prioritize digital art since then! But it had the form of me first drawing something on the paper, and then scanning and fixing/lining/coloring it on the computer for a LONG time! Well, it was taking some time to get used to, as well, so I also had some drawings I did with my mouse and vector tool in PS or SAI, like this:

It is one of the only few remaining "ancient" ones, since most of them got lost forever on the old hard drive! ...I still HAVE this hard drive, I just have no idea how to extract anything from it.. It is kinda broken :U But if I get my hands on very old doodles trapped there, I will share!

^ I believe this was the first doodle that I did 100% on the computer AND with the tablet! Without mouse, without first drawing traditonally and then digitally, but just on the computer, from start to finish! But it was still hard to do, so I kept with the use of paper and pencil for some more while. Like- I hoped I'd find some old drawings for this ask, but all I found were traditional versions of some of my drawings!

You could tell that using traditional paper + pencil were beneficial for anatomy and proportions. And that I used to be better at that, VERY much better. And that it was sorta... easier to 'get lost' in the process? It was a simpler life when not only I was far less depressed and broken, not only I had more spare time in schoo/uni years, but also just... I did not feel burnt out. Or guilty over the fact of not finishing new drawing "fast enough" (and thus, looking like a loser). I also had less things online to drain my spare time, less distractions... I kinda miss that time, really...

All in all, I've never learned to draw PROPERLY. I was self-taught but not studying too hard, mostly I was just analysing art of artists I loved to improve my own, and asking advice from good artists to fix this or that! Hence, my skill used to be better! Year 2015-16 was my most productive year artistically! I've been drawing a bunch of (then) popular cartoon stuff, as well as TONS of fanart for Rick and Morty RP community, and all the things were sooooo bright, colorful and full of energy...

And now meet the man that sorta ended my art career :^) I've picked interest in Mark (Endlish localisation called him Marx and I hate it lol), and that pulled me into the rest of K1rby. Except I could not actually play anything (besides 64 Crystal Shards that I emulated), so I compensated with letsplays and anime. And Super Paper Mario was a side obsession. xD But.... yeah, since MARK, dark ages for my art started. No, no, my art was good! Awesome, even! I kept people begging me to "please draw K1rby again" for years since fandom shifting! Words like, 'no one ever cared about this universe and characters the same way you do'... But! Drawing 'creatures' for 2-3 years completely destroyed my prior (already loose) knowledge of human anatomy and proportions, and I am still struggling to recover that former skill! :')

Finally, year later, around February/March 2021, I've gotten pulled into Bloodb0rne! Badly. And thanks to Mic0lash. Huh, it is always some madman, isn't it? xD But I felt very self-consious about my art... I felt like serious, detailed, dark and beautiful atmosphere of BB deserved better than my "overly cutesy" and "tone-deaf" art.... annnnd if this sounds like something I'd never say, but rather as an unfair criticism from some antsy reddit-ish asshole? It is because it is EXACTLY what it was! :')

But in either case, the Doll was the first time I've used paper and pencil again in many years. I felt so... alive? I recall the feeling I could only describe as 'blood returned in my veins' but spiritual, you know? It felt like so much fun! To remember how to draw traditonally, to break out of my 'round cutesy' comfort zone- heck, I even downloaded brushes for my SAI for the first time in my life, just to color the characters better! Learned new coloring style, too: usually my coloring was very rigid and relying on very concrete colors for shadow and base.. but from this point on, I prioritized more 'chaotic' approach, as I felt it was more appropriate!

....and so, now we are here. x)

You could tell that some of the things I am just used to persisted, and that colorful, "childish" energy is still slipping through the cracks. Soulsb0rne games are ideal for how my mind works... but perhaps not for how my soul works. There is just something in me that craves that sillyness, overly colorful designs and settings, and maybe ER is closer to that aesthetic? Yeah, had I not been criticized on my art harshly upon joining BB, maybe my art would've been way more cute and 'free'! I always loved drawing many details, but something about the route I've taken about drawing made it very heavy. My brain short-circuits at the AMOUNT of the details I keep in mind, yet I can't rest unless I got it "at least 90% correct", even when it is a darn shitpost ;-; I will figure out what went wrong compared with the way I used to draw humans..... someday.

Thank you for asking, though! Ha! Honorable mention: tons of shitposty comics and doodles I kept drawing in classes, both school and uni! x)

#ask replies #personal #doodles #memories #creativity #visual art #damn that was a neede retrospection... even if a bit sad one #I've also have insentive to think that the reason my art got 'distorted' is my eye condition and..... something with my brain #hoooo boy #like you know those 'before and after' drawing comparison from the same person when their mental illness progressed?#basically I have insentive to think it is something drastic like this especially with how I seem to be intellectually regressing #...about everything but 'mysteries of the universe' and spirituality #I really AM going to turn into a spider huh?! okay when and how kos did something to me? fdsjhhfdsds #but yeah basically? I've been 'this way' since childhood #i always took art assignments over the top #not mentioned in the post because yes sad stuff is for the tags but teachers at school abused this skill lol #they kept forcing me to draw large canvases for holidays and events without any compensation for my wasted time -_-#god I hate teachers in government-funded schools!#still thank you for the ask!#i am not accustomed to so much interest to my weird ass self so sorry if I appear like I am taking it for granted..#i'll respond in kind! .....eventually ;-;

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not-my-circuss · 1 year

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So I'm house-sitting for my sister and decided to take a stroll in the nearby cemetery (get comfy with death, enjoy the peace and quiet of the early hours with the sunlight reflecting off the dew freckled grass, etc) and I accidentally stumbled across my grandfather's grave.

I saw the last name and was like "oh hey", then I recognized the death date and was like "oh hey??" So I called my mom and confirmed his first name and birthday.

She doesn't like to talk about him much, and she never felt that visiting his headstone was necessary, so I had no idea this was here.

So even though he died when I was 3 and I never really knew him, I sat down and talked to him a while. I don't necessarily believe they can hear you, but I do believe in the therapeutic nature of speaking to someone who can no longer respond.

Then I used both of the blank sheets of paper I brought to do a grave rubbing of his stone, and walked on

#nessa says #text post #personal #cemetery #graveyard #death mention #i told him about how his daughters dont get along anymore #and how i hope they can resolve that before they run out of time #also my mom commented how its been 21 years and i said: your grief is old enough to drink #which in retrospect isnt great but i gotta crack jokes or I'll di-

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poptartmochi · 1 year

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13, 18, and 25 for year end asks!

13. How was your birthday this year?

Ohh man, truly I don't remember my birthday at all.. ^^; I looked through my gallery and Snapchat, and all I have is one photo of the mannequin at work after some kid pulled its arm out of the socket, making it look like Slenderman 😆 my birthday is during school season at work, so I was busy!

18. A memorable meal this year?

the Airport Qdoba... it will haunt me forever <3 </3 When I went to visit my sister, one of my layovers was in Atlanta and I was sooooo certain the airport there had a Cinnabon. I had work before I flew out and i'm notoriously bad at Not Eating when I'm working, so I think I'd only had like. half a bagel from my manager when I went to the airport? but I was convinced I would be fine Because I Was Going to Feast At the Cinnabon in the Atlanta Airport <3

I WAS SO WRONG LMAOOOO. Atlanta does not. in fact. have a Cinnabon inside its airport (although i think at one point it Did?? there's a cinnabon facebook with its location inside one of the terminals.. but iirc it hadn't posted in a Long Time), which I realized after traveling between terminals like a chicken with its head cut off.. my denial was real, I must have spent at least 45 minutes trying to find it.. T o T

Once I caved and admitted defeat, I ran into a huge issue because most airport restaurants actually close at like. 8 or 9!! So I was suddenly faced not only with Defeat but like bone deep hunger, I remember this vividly! iirc I found a buffalo wild wings or something similar that was seating people, but there was a line in front of me so I put my name on their waitlist and plopped down at a gate for like 30 minutes.. and then they closed... and i was like Oh. FUCK!

So, with time quickly dwindling before my plane arrived, I started Fucking Walking like a crazed dog, true majimacore, trying to find a Restaurant, any restaurant 😭😭 I was so hungry at this point.. the promise of food from buffalo wild wings had kept me going but that was gone now! T_T so I hopped on the tram between concourses one final time because everything in my concourse was Now Closed, in the hopes that something would be open in another terminal..

when I got off the tram and started walking in the new terminal, I encountered a Chick Fil A and i really was about to break my boycott because i STILL remember how good their food smelled, it was like a remy the rat Moment.. but the line was so long and I was running out of time to get back to my terminal in time for my plane, so I hurried along in the hopes anywhere else was open.. luckily for me, this terminal had a proper food court and !!! qdoba!!

I wanted to sit and eat it in that terminal because I was Truly Starving at this point (i found my liveblog of it and. funny story. the day before i posted abt how i hadn't eaten all day 😳😳 so i was on like hour 38 of Hunger), but time was getting iffy now and I was worried I'd be late so I went back to my gate and, funnily enough I had a Fair Bit of Time Until My Plane Came.. it's the time hunger dilation ykwim T_T. anyhow I scarfed that Qdoba down in like 3 minutes flat and felt sick because I ate it so fast lol 🙈🙈

imo qdoba is okay, and it was still true in this situation, but ouugh I will NEVER forget it because. that is a height of drama, despair, and desperation I have not experienced in Some Time.. to top the entire thing off, I learned that Cinnabon was in Charlotte's airport.. i will never make the mistake of thinking it's in Atlanta again lol!

25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

This gave me a miniature crisis because it made me confront the fact that 2022 was not, in fact, 2021... everything I've attributed to 2022 happened in 2021 and this was actually somewhat unsettling to realize.. idk WHAT i got up to this year lol!! 🤪🤪😳🆘🆘🆘

upon reflection, I didn't actually make many new characters this year! It was a lot of refining Gioia and fleshing out the supporting characters for her narrative better.... you know who WAS created this year... miss gioier... (around valentines day, apparently! which is so funny because if her narrative isn't 39% Love Loses than idk What it is lol!)

i already wrote paragraphs about the Cinnabon-Qdboba incident and that was small bananas SO. Miss Gioier is going into scp containment beneath the readmore because we all know it's about to get long and rambly <3

Edit: I finally finished writing the readmore... yeah it's super fucking long <3 If you don't want to read it all, here's a SparkNotes of her character: longtime friend of Vergil + a spy for the Order's underground movement against the demons. Gets abducted and basically turned into a metaphysical demon mole, which inadvertently leads to the murders of the Order's members. Her guilt over this leads to her becoming Vergil's lackey after the events of the game, in which many memory-erasing hijinks ensue. Eventually she and the metaphysical demon break free of Vergil's clutches and help Dante and Kat to oppose him. Her metaphysical demon mole powers accidentally grant her the ability to warp reality, which is a big facet of both her boss battles.

ahh the girlie that was Never Meant to Be.. when I first replayed the reboot, I was pretty far down the Gioia hole already but I disliked the reboot so much that I Swore i would never make a reboot edition of her.. and for like two months I held true to that promise! but then i made the mistake of listening to poppy and looking at this exact photo:

and something spawned in my mind that i have YET to be rid of </3

i always call her Gioier to differentiate her from the original timeline, but I recently Officially Named her Magdalena, so that's what she'll be called henceforth! <3 I won't delve too far into her development because truthfully I don't remember most of it and also it is a rollercoaster of abandoned ideas and retcons lol!

So! for context. The DMC Reboot is set in a city called Limbo that's basically a surveillance state ran by demons masquerading around as humans (important time to mention that the final boss pretends to be a guy named Kyle.. i'm still unwell over this 🤓). Most people are unaware of this due to a variety of reasons, but there is a n underground cell of people working to overthrow the state- they're called the Order! This group is lead by a guy named Vergil, who is actually dun dun dun, the child of a demon and an angel and thus the only thing strong enough to defeat the aforementioned Kyle, who we'll henceforth refer to by his serious name Mundus... anyhow there's rituals to reaching the core of Mundus or something like that- in any case, he can't do it alone and needs the help (read: power) of his long lost twin brother Dante to do so. Dante is in and out of the system and altogether a mystery girl, so Vergil uses the help of a human psychic named Kat to track him down and bring him into the Order's fold. The plot follows their adventures in basically kicking the legs out from under the powers that be and toppling the system, yay!! But in doing so, they kind of shatter the barrier between the human and demon worlds... yay?... boo?.... And plot twist, Vergil doesn't even care for humanity Like That, he just wants to be the one in control of everything! tragic 😞

so where does Magdalena fit into all of this? well. She was one of the first members of the Order, and she's been spying on the demons for them all this time. On the surface, she's a musician/DJ/singer/?? that regularly performs at the nightclub owned by Mundus' right hand woman, Lilith. I have yet to figure out the extent of how she gets her information, sometimes it's just her eavesdropping + observing the crowd between sets and sometimes it's her engaging in Britney Spears Break the Ice-style mania... In any case, Magdalena is nestled deep in lion's den, but it's this risky position that allows her to feed a lot of crucial information back to the Order.

Before the events of the game, the Order is focused on finding Dante so that Vergil can proceed with his plans of overthrowing Mundus, and this is something of particular importance to Magdalena as well. When Magdalena was young, her parents were (gasp) murdered for running an undercover radio network criticizing the demons and she was sent to an orphanage. This orphanage is incidentally the same on Dante ended up at once the demons found him after his father's betrayal of Mundus, and they struck up a really tight friendship... Originally it was because Dante stuck up for her, but considering the positions they were in when they met, maybe it was the other way around! :O In any case, the situation is very fucked up because everyone at the orphanage is tied to dissidence and, were it not for their usefulness, should be dead. Anyhow, Magdalena doesn't spend a ton of time there before her much older brother, coincidentally aided by Vergil's adoptive parents, was able to find her and assume guardianship of her. The fact that she abandoned Dante there is something that lingered heavily over her 12-year old mind after returning to the 'normal' world, and became a heavier thought still once she encountered Vergil at one of his parents' / her brother's events and went 😨😨😨😨😱, because who the fuck is this dude who looks just like the bestie she abandoned to fend for himself in hell!! wtf!!!

iirc, the game pushes the idea that A Long Time Ago, Kat was the one who helped Vergil recover his memories of his childhood + learn of his true nature, but the comic directly contradicts this? In the comic, Vergil already has a solid grasp of his abilities and knows Way More about limbo/ hell? than Kat does. Normally, I disregard stuff presented in side material that doesn't fit what I'm working with, BUT.. This contradiction paired with the twist at the end of the comic is unsettling enough that I decided to roll with it.

So! After so many instances where Magdalena and Vergil are forced to be in the same space because their adults have a close work relationship, Vergil finally confronts her about why she always looks so horrified at the sight of him, and so begins an incredibly long and ill-fated friendship... Magdalena explains herself and Vergil doesn't believe it, but then he begins questioning his memories and The Disillusionment Begins. Magdalena shares what she knows of demons with Vergil, and over the years the two secretly begin to build up the Order.

Unrelated to her 💃🏻💃🏻 with Vergil, she also builds up a musical identity as the years go on. At the beginning, this was because she was too scared and hurt to talk about what happened to her after her parents' death, and it was easier to convey herself through sound. As she became older and felt safer in her situation, she still used it to comment on things she couldn't speak about literally; this and her banger production skills 🤪 drew a lot of people to her, which she eventually used to guide people towards the Order. In time, her popularity caught the attention of Lilith, who invited her to perform at the Devil's Dalliance partially because her music was so captivating and partially because Lilith remembered who she was and wanted to keep tabs on her. In a DMC3 Vergil-esque delusion of grandeur, Magdalena thought she had one up on the demons and dove into the deep! Beyond being able to spy on the demons from her new position, I think Magdalena's role here is also beneficial to the Order because it gets them a lot of ins that they wouldn't have access to normally- I like to imagine the festival (?) at the beginning of the comic is like this. In any case, this drives her away from Vergil- partially by necessity and partially because Magdalena is just a very dedicated individual lol. This also brings us back around to the comic- she's not there to crowd Kat because she's doing her own things in service of the Order.

Anyways! Circling back around to the hunt for Dante! fuck the vergil's downfall dlc, THIS is Magdalena's downfall man 😭😭😭 between the very old guilt about abandoning dante + the newfound knowledge that he is a key part of achieving Magdalena's core goal of overthrowing the demons' rule over humanity, Magdalena is Incredibly devoted to finding Dante. By the end of the comic, the Order has stepped back from finding Dante because he's basically gone off the radar after breaking out of a prison- it'd be easier for the demons to guide the Order to him, iirc. At some point before the start of the game, Dante starts frequenting the Devil's Dalliance- enough for the girls that work there to be decently familiar with him. One of them mentions him around Magdalena, and she basically gets the metal gear ❗ above her head lol. They start talking about him, and Magdalena's ready to run on home and have a MOM HOLY FUCK moment, BUT.... either the girl snitches to Lilith or Lilith happens to overhear their conversation (she is a demon and the nightclub Is her domain after all...), but. to say the least, Magdalena does Not Run On Home 💘😨

instead... she's yagga'd and brought to. Honestly Probably Some Room in the Club, but does Magdalena know this? no ❤ anyhow, she comes to and is interrogated about Dante. This is pretty brutal because Lilith circles back on her childhood friendship with Dante, trying to get Magdalena to reveal that they've somehow been in contact and Conspiring Together all this time. Magdalena has five seconds of terror about this before she realizes Lilith Doesn't Know About the Order and starts playing 5D chess not just for her life, but for the Order's too. Magdalena, steel-willed as ever, manages to keep the facade up but after all the interrogation and torture, Lilith isn't convinced that Magdalena and Dante aren't connected somehow. If Lilith was wrong about this, it would mean that most of her interactions + her entire business relationship with Magdalena would have been a huge waste of time... Speaking of huge wastes of time, Magdalena is still in the chair and Lilith is still no closer to figuring out why she was asking about Dante. If she isn't going to get the bottom of this, she might as well ensure that something fruitful comes of the interrogation, so she does something unorthodox...

In the game, there's a class of demons that look like normal humans called spotters/lookers- I always forget this and imo they are swagless names SO. I will be referring to them as seekers because that's essentially what they do anyways :O But, so the seekers. You never encounter one in actual gameplay, only cutscenes, and their only purpose is to drag Dante into Limbo and into a fighting sequence. When they spot Dante, this black liquid called Malice starts pouring out of their eyes and mouth, and then he's ferried into the other world. They are incredibly weak, capable of being handled by a single knife to the head- the one that's taken out this way makes no attempt to dodge the knife, either. My take on this is that the Seekers are just vessels for Malice that use human corpses as conduits. I think the Malice preserves the corpse so that the Seeker can blend in with regular society (the last one we see is at the club lol!) until it finds its target. The most important thing is the Malice, which serves as an anchor point for Limbo to overtake the waking world once it's out of the Seeker...

For me, there is no soul beneath the Seeker's influence. The way they move is so sluggish and they don't seem super aware of their surroundings beyond their target's presence. That, their robotic pursuit of their target, and the fact that we encounter plenty of disembodied souls throughout the game brought me to that conclusion. So! The unorthodox thing that Lilith does is turn Magdalena into a Seeker, but retain her soul. This way, Magdalena can go about her business as usual, none the wiser that she's a walking time bomb. She can keep searching for Dante, and when she does, he'll be dragged off into Limbo as easy pickings for the demons. Plus, in the meantime, Lilith gets to keep the DJ that draws people to her club like moths to a flame. It's an easy win-win for her.

So the seekerization begins.. dun dun dun. I don't really have a solid idea for what this actually means, but it involves something like in Death Stranding where the BTs drag Sam through the tar and into the Seam.. I like to think there is a psychological battle here too, while Magdalena's fighting for her life, but after everything Lilith's put her through, she loses 😞🤘🏻 Magdalena drowns in the Malice, and as she does so the Seeker overtakes her body, corroding the insides to make room for the tar. At the end, Lilith puts her soul back into her body and wipes her memories of the interrogation. Now she's like Danny Phantom!

When Magdalena later comes to, it's to the girls at the club worriedly checking on her because she "fell asleep at the booth!", or something of that nature. They urge her to go home- she's been working too much and tonight was a split stage so the other act could take over or something. Magdalena feels super hazy, on account of dying and being shoved back into her own corpse, so she obliges and goes to change out into her civvies. She misses some key things as she does so- the numbness, the light handprints around her limbs...

I forget how long there is between the seekerization and the kickoff of the game, but it can't be super long because Dante's presence at the club is already known to Lilith when she interrogates Magdalena. In any case, she's able to go for a little while without realizing something has happened to her, and the Order is safe in the meantime because the Malice can only alert the demons to her location if she sees Dante.

The passage of time between her transformation and the beginning of the game is a Trial for Magdalena- anytime Dante's name is brought up, mainly at the Order, pressure from the Malice builds up in anticipation of seeing him and bridging the waking world and Limbo. Magdalena writes this off as anxiety about crossing the threshold from the Order's present to their future, and carries on as best as she can until the morning the game begins... The discovery of Dante and the tipping of Limbo has the Malice in a silly goofy state that finally sets the alarms off in Magdalena's mind, so she sets out to find Kat because Kat, with all her psychic powers, is probably the only person who could figure out what's happening to her. The television broadcasts of the pier getting fucked up because of Dante stoke the Malice further, and by the time she reaches the Order, she's on the brink of like.. sensory overload? For lack of word?

All I've really got for the next bit is that she runs into Vergil, because Vergil needs to remember in the future that something was Off about her here. The interaction is inconsequential- I think Vergil is excited that Kat has retrieved Dante, and Magdalena is just *TV STATIC* 👁👁🤘🏻 *TV STATIC*. They watch Kat and Dante pull up to the Order together on the cameras, and then Vergil leaves to go greet them while Magdalena stays behind? And then she sees Dante on the cameras and it's game over for her as the Seeker overtakes her consciousness because finally, finally it's time to drag Dante into Limbo!!! Except. Dante is no longer on the camera she's watching, and also they aren't even in the same room together.... he has unknowingly checkmated the Seeker lol

I have no idea what happens to Magdalena after this moment, but she's taken off the board for the literal rest of the game. <3 😅 I feel like a logical conclusion would be that she's fighting for her life through Limbo, which is incredibly alien to her because She Is Not a Demon.. it removes her from the picture until the end of the game, when the seal between Limbo and the waking world is broken, but I truly don't know what I want to happen 😫 In any case, the little ping she created when she saw Dante on the camera proves to be consequential, as it provides the location of the Order to the demons, which is precisely how they're able to storm it later in the game.

As I said, Magdalena only comes back to herself after the game is finished. The world around her is in ruins, and she is! horrified by this! The Seeker, which she's now aware of, has also been corrupted because of the nature of the world- the metaphysical gap it was meant to bridge no longer exists in a stable state, so it in and of itself is like a glitched entity now. Once again, Magdalena decides to go to the Order in the hopes of finding Kat. When she reaches the Order, she finds it in ruins, with the bodies of her old friends and comrades piled up from the raid earlier. This sight proves to be too much for her, and her brain jumps 15 steps and concludes that she and her earlier episode with Dante and the Malice are to blame for the state of things around her. She is to blame for the collapse of the Order and the death of her friends.

As she's having a proper menty b over this, two things happen. Since she doesn't have a proper body, she starts crying Malice instead of tears- the Malice interacts with the environment and tries to warp into Limbo, but this isn't a really a thing that can happen anymore. Weird metaphysical effects occur, which Magdalena misses because she is deep in her breakdown... but that's okay, because Vergil (who is in the area for. Reasons?) notices! :] 😨😨😨😬

now mind you, this is the Vergil that's gone through the whole game and ALSO his evil girl DLC. So, when he sees his best friend who'd been assumed dead crying over the corpses of everyone they'd created their underground movement with, what he really sees is the odd ways reality warps around her. He sees an opportunity! 😈😰 so begins Magdalena's downfall pt. 2!

In an evil nod to the way Vergil grounds Gioia during a moment of extreme grief in the main universe, Vergil draws her back to reality here. Magdalena is overwhelmed with relief to see that at least Vergil has survived the Everything, but the sight of him also twists the knife in her heart because she was the one who caused him all this loss. Her guilt is subtly tangible, thanks to the Malice, so Vergil puts it to work and begins The Manipulations. He paints a false picture of what happened in the aftermath of Magdalena's blackout, one that makes her think Kat and Dante died so she doesn't go off looking for them and risk being swayed away from him. Her powers could be useful to him.

Magdalena has no reason to question anything Vergil says, so she believes him blindly. In my head there's a lot of gravity to this for her- if she helps him, she can atone for the death of the Order. I think she's also able to rationalize What He Does in a post-DLC setting with the same logic he tried to levy against Kat and Dante- this is for humanity's own good! Her own fuckening supports this logic- if someone is ruling over the demons, it prevents more amalgamations like her from being created.

I don't really know what Vergil's motivations would be in a theoretical DmC2, nor what the conflict would be. For me, it would pick up very shortly after the finale of the first game and deal with the fallout of Vergil and Dante's actions, namely the shattering of the veil between Limbo and the waking world. I like to imagine that the world would take on some Death Stranding-esque characteristics!

Magdalena would fill in as Vergil's right hand man, since Kat is now lost to him. Beyond the whole savior and sinner thing they have going on, Vergil also helps Magdalena develop a symbiosis with the Seeker and harness its mutated powers. I think Magdalena reads more into it because she is seeing him through... highly saturated rose-tinted glasses lol! But this is solely for Vergil's own benefit, and he doesn't hesitate to dispose of her once she becomes more trouble than she's worth.

But how does she do that! 😯 So at some point it is not only natural but Fair that, after both catastrophically failed attempts, Magdalena finally runs into Kat. This is a crazygirl reunion, because Magdalena thought Kat was dead! She grieved her! And Kat thought Magdalena had died a long time ago, during the raid! so it's a very spiderman meme moment, but then Dante shows up and things go awry because the Seeker has yet to overcome its initial programming. idk what happens after this, but when she comes across Vergil again, she excitedly tells him he was wrong about Kat and Dante dying, unaware of The Fallout... Vergil wipes her memories of Kat altogether, and with a portion of Magdalena's psyche gone, the Seeker takes over more of her consciousness. The symbiosis deepens!

This second iteration of Magdalena is Golden for some time, until she runs into Kat again and comes back to him with a myriad of questions. He overwrites her one more time, so that all that's left of her is her devotion to him? Consequently, the Seeker takes over more of the mindscape, but the Seeker is automatically loyal to Vergil's power so it might as well be the same thing. Some Final Line is Crossed, maybe the Seeker falls short of his expectations or has a Cringefail Henchman Moment that gives Dante a leg up over them or something, and as stated above, Vergil decides it's outlived its usefulness to him. He goes to town on it with the Yamato and leaves it for dead, which probably would have been fine for him If the seeker was not some weird fucked up mutation with properties tied directly to reality 😔

This is a turning point for the Seeker, because... you KICK MIETTE? YOU SLICE ITS BODY LIKE THE HAM!! Magdalena's body is a conduit for the Seeker, and without it, the Seeker probably cannot exist. It begins to warp reality to meld her back together, fighting tooth and nail against the brink of both their deaths. As it does this, it mulls over Things and realizes the symbiosis between them was not just physical and mental, but emotional too! It's been through all sorts of madness with Magdalena, and it is afraid to go on without her. Even in their final iteration together, where things were more Seeker than Magdalena, it was Magdalena's power of will that put the fuel in the Seeker's tank. The Seeker is a simplistic demon, one that was never meant to have its own will. It is afraid of trying to survive this alien world without Magdalena guiding it. Thus, its driving motivation is to keep them alive and bring Magdalena back from the brink.

Dante coincidentally strolls in to the place where the Seeker is trying to reconnect everything- I like to imagine this is a very eerie moment of gameplay, trudging through pools of Malice with fragments of Magdalena's memories playing, sometimes looping, overhead as the Seeker pores through her mind and tries to restore it from Vergil's influence. Once it realizes Dante is literally tromping through its efforts, it becomes hostile and a fun boss fight begins, one that leans heavily into the "your environment Actively Hates You" angle from the first game. Lots of tricky platforming/maneuvering- the Seeker blames Dante for it and Magdalena's entire situation (I like to imagine it has some very Choice things to say to him during the fight lol!), and his presence is exacerbating things again. In trying to protect Magdalena from him, the Seeker defines its own purpose and finally breaks out from its programming! Dante concedes the fight when he understands what is happening, and decides to help the Seeker because hey, Magdalena was once his friend a long time ago. In a similar way to her obsession with finding him because she'd abandoned him long ago, Dante is dedicated to helping Magdalena because he and Kat didn't try to wrench her away from Vergil, despite all the red flags around her situation.

Strengthened by its newfound purpose, the Seeker is able to mend their body back into one functional piece. It and Dante are like 👁👁❗❗❗ because Magdalena should come to, now that her body's reassembled, right! Right?....... right? Wrong! 😭 Magdalena had already been greatly diminished by the memory wipes, but Vergil's final betrayal of her was the straw that broke the camel's back. It ran counter to the truths she'd understood, to the world he'd painted for her. The Seeker and Dante are stumped by this, so Dante takes them back to his and Kat's hideout.

I think Kat is. unnerved. lol. Here is the corpse of her good friend, and it talks in her friend's voice! but now it is explaining how she is functionally six feet under. and the corpse is afraid of living life without her. the corpse does not know how to coax magdalena back to the surface. and again, the corpse speaks in magdalena's voice. Also, the corpse is a demon that until three hours ago swore obsessive fealty to Vergil. hm. Kat and Dante have an aside about the situation and the viability of trying to save Magdalena from mental limbo, but Kat folds for similar reasons to Dante. She and Magdalena had been friends for....... a while? And Magdalena had been one of the first and friendliest faces she'd met after joining the Order.. so long ago. She didn't want to leave Magdalena on her own again- the first time she'd done that, Magdalena had disappeared for weeks on end and Kat hadn't even considered it because of Everything going on. The second time, she'd let Magdalena go back to Vergil, and then Magdalena didn't remember her when they met again afterwards. Kat wouldn't forego her a third time, lest Magdalena be lost to her completely. Plus... something was off. There was an itch in Kat's mind, one that she hoped retrieving Magdalena would scratch.

So begins Kat's adventures through Magdalena's psyche! I have no idea how this would fit in to the pacing of a game, because the narrative has been. a little too focused on Magdalena for my liking. But there's many starts and stops here, many attempts that the Seeker aborts because it feels like pouring salt on a wound. Eventually Kat is able to dive deep enough into the metaphysical space between Magdalena and the Seeker to find her, but Magdalena does not take well to Kat's intrusion. She doesn't remember Kat. This was unsettling enough when Kat first ran into it, but now that the interaction is drawn out, it's even worse. Kat tries to explain who she is, how she and Magdalena were friends, but Magdalena isn't having it. Magdalena simply doesn't remember Kat, and the way Kat explains their connections through Vergil doesn't align with what she knows to be true- after all, Vergil hadn't fiddled with her memories of their friendship. Magdalena ejects Kat, berating her for spouting lies to try and earn her trust.

When Kat comes to... girl she is CONFUSED LOL!!! There's still the issue of Nagdalena not remembering her, but now?? she's calling her a liar?? girl what.. girl how.. Kat consults with Dante about this, but Dante knows even less about the situation than her- he only knew Magdalena from before she met Vergil, and Kat after she met Vergil. Anything between these events are a mystery to him! 😭 Kat talks about it with the Seeker one singular time, when it informs her that it came into Magdalena's psyche after Kat was an established part of the Order... BUT... What it did know is that Magdalena felt threatened by Kat, that she was nervous Vergil was going to replace her with Kat so quickly. Kat goes wha huh??? at the "quickly" and stews over this. Quickly??? Maybe Magdalena and Vergil had created the Order years ago, but Kat had been around Vergil for some time, too! It wasn't a friendship that had happened overnight.

Kat is stumped by this, and the more she thinks about it, the less sense it makes unless Magdalena was just possessive of him, but that doesn't align with things either. SO, methinks in between missions or what have you (how does DmC2 play?.. your honor I have no fucking idea lol. Maybe like 5 but with an interact-able home base.. as if Nero had been able to walk through his van and do little things here and there between levels ykwim?), Kat dives back in and tries to make sense of it all with Magdalena.

This is a significant development between the two of them, even though I think it's happening in the background for Dante? Anyhow, the stars finally align for them to realize that Kat has rewritten memories TOO- there Is a spiderman pikachu meme moment here lol. So then I think Magdalena starts coming back into her own body again, because this revelation has re-dawned on her the fact that Vergil is. a bit of a cunt lol 😭, and now she's invested in figuring out the blanks in Kat's memory. The two and the Seeker go back and forth, helping each other parse out the things Vergil had erased... Dante is probably involved in this to some degree, because he is no stranger to this? But idk. Eventually, Kat remembers the vortex explosion, which.. keep a pin in this, it will come in handy later harharhar. With the full truth of their relationships with Vergil and each other out in the air, die girlies are like 😐😐 god damn we were played like fiddles huh!!

This next part is far less fleshed out than the previous stuff, which is obvi very loosely laid out as well. But! At some point, the girlies recreate the vortex moment but it's a lot more potent because reality and Limbo shift in and out of each other like fluids now. This throws Vergil off his villainous plans, and gives the group a leg up over him in ??? The Struggle??? . At a later point, Magdalena reaches full symbiosis with the Seeker and the two have a boss fight against Vergil where they take out all their grievances against him. This is ultimately a distraction so Dante and Kat can do ?? things ??, but I like to imagine there's a Sonic Adventure 2 kind of thing where you can play through the game as Vergil, and then the boss fight is against Maggie + the Seeker. In either case, it is a difficult and gritty vengeance battle.... It's kind of like the DM3 Vergil-Dante fight, their philosophies cannot coexist and so they MUST battle. Also it's a quasi-breakup fight lol.

No idea what happens in the end.. I've also skipped over Isaac's role in the story (he's supposed to be crucial to bringing Magdalena back into her own), as well as the Seeker's greater importance to Maggie. and THEIR relationship bc there's a Whole Thing going on there...... anyways I have a whole lot of reading and research to do before I'd ever be comfortable fully tackling this.. Characters like Magdalena, who deal with possession, require more care because I don't want them to come off as caricatures of DID. The setting also calls for more imaginative work than I am currently capable of putting in! So Magdalena and her universe are currently things for me to just gnaw on and continually return to as I learn and read more hehe. :] Hopefully one day I'll be able to give it and the reboot the treatment they deserve lol!

#long post #thank you for the ask Sky!! :D i am.. so sorry it took me so long to answer! i think i could have finished it by the end of last year but #alas i decided to leave my laptop at home when i went on vacay </3 #also... ghdhghjdhga #the prompt: write an introduction to an oc you made this year!#me: writes a whole dissertation instead #jkjk this is much shorter than a dissertation but... in retrospect i wrote too much! a true crash course to maggie and her entire universe #; u ; alas.. it is all written out now >:]#the only tragedy is that maggie's character introduction was finished before gioia's... she eclipses her maker once again lol!#sriracha.txt #sriracha ask game #💃🏻

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