JUST READ EVERYTHING THERE IS ABOUT THE ZOMBIE AU !!!!! LOVE THIS SO MUCH WAAAA
you mentioned that ritsu, by the end of the story, is broken and practically insane. once shigeo is cured and "back to normal," i'm guessing that ritsu doesn't exactly go back to "being normal" either :( he'd gone through too much to be the same after everything... do you think he ever goes back to old habits and treats mob like he's still a zombie, only to be shellshocked at the fact that it's all over?
also this au is very reminiscent of this post (grieving the undead)
https://www.tumblr.com/applejuicewerewolf/735120232698593280/no-need-to-keep-this-in-the-tags-youre
WEEEE IMSO GLAD U LIKE IT it's the direct result of my brainworms
yes ritsu is definitely Not Normal by the end and he should be put into therapy immediately. poor kid's seen way too much at way too young of an age, and he's been put through unreal amounts of stress that is definitely not good for a growing brain. he most certainly does not go back to "normal" when mob is cured, and much like his brother, he's never quite the same as he was before
he Absolutely has trouble squashing old habits, yes. he tends to just Do Shit for mob that he's fully capable of doing now, no matter how simple, bc as a zombie mob couldn't rly do all that. he opens food packages for him automatically, he unlatches doors even though mob is perfectly capable of Figuring Out a Lock. sometimes when it's raining ritsu will even pull mob's hood over his head—he used to do that for him when he was a zombie, to keep the rain off him, even if zombie mob didn't rly give a damn if it was raining or not
if mob were anybody else, he'd prolly find it a bit insulting, but instead he finds it kind of amusing most of the time
sometimes he grabs mob's hand and leads him around and it's only when they're like halfway there that he realizes what he's doing. mob doesn't particularly mind, but when his goal is elsewhere and they're aiming for different places he has to go "ritsu ..." and it's this awkward blinking session like . oh .right. yes.ofc
i think mob would ? maybe get a little annoyed at the hovering that ritsu totally unintentionally does. he hovers so closely bc zombie mob never rly minded, or ,, noticed. so now that he's back to "human" levels of awareness it is . extremely obvious. and it's not even that ritsu is Worried, it's just like he's spent so long Hovering and Fretting that it's just kinda second nature to him now
it's a strange role-reversal—it's very weird for mob to wake up and have scattered memories of the last two years, and suddenly feel like he's the younger brother instead. ritsu is now the caretaker, and it's... strange. and honestly, the first real goal mob has in mind after waking up and recovering for a while is settling back into the role of older brother. it's important to him
but much like how reigen now has trouble corralling that kid, mob has some difficulty getting ritsu to settle back into it too. he's too high-strung and stressed and permanently scarred to rest and let people take care of him, too used to being the caretaker himself. for the longest time he was forced into the mindset of, "you stop, you die," so ritsu keeps going bc his instincts r shot and he feels like he's in danger all the time
after a while of gentle nudging, mob gets the hang of convincing ritsu to lean on people, to lean on him, but mob is quietly distraught at the overall state of ritsu's mental well-being. it takes him a while to rly get a grasp of how bad it truly is, but once he realizes the damage, he's .. so fuckin upset w himself for letting this happen to his brother
as if it's rly his fault at all, but he regrets being slow and getting overrun by that zombie horde to begin with. maybe if he hadn't turned, ritsu would be a lot better off now—they woulda been able to join a settlement, and live in a place where there is supplies and food and clothing and other people to talk to other than your mumbling brother who no longer fully understands you. it likely would've spared him a lot of trauma
and alsoYES that post is EXACTLY it the concept of mourning a person u still see every day is ougougouhoguhg ,., .,witsu ..................
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do you think the mess in oshiros hotel is meant to signify that hes been letting his problems pile up until its become too overwhelming to handle.
im thinking about the fact that he's definitely the one who's been making the mess but he doesn't even realize it. he ignores the clutter until it becomes too hard to ignore you know? like when it starts actively blocking the way to the presidential suite. he insists that he and his staff will handle it and that madeline shouldn't clean up his own mess, but he still doesn't do anything about it. does he know that the staff is gone? that it's just him there?
mr oshiro is so hell bent on impressing madeline so that she'll stay in his hotel. he's so in denial of everything. he doesn't even realize he's dead, he still thinks his hotel never got shut down. I think his insistence on her staying is bc he really wants to believe that the hotel is open, and a costumer would affirm that belief. it could also maybe be a mixture of loneliness too. (also, him treating her as a costumer even after she says no is absolutely him being in denial. that man is very unhealthily attached to this hotel,)
and even though it was nice of madeline to clean it up, there's still parts of the hotel she can't fix. the plumbing. the windows. the, hole in the ceiling (oops.) she's not qualified to help him, and that's why I think the chapter ends on a bit of a sour note. madeline is of course not a bad person for wanting to help, the point is that she can't. it is unfortunate but true
anyways mr oshiro is a very good character i like him a regular amount. im normal about that old man
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Grian’s been keeping a log since the Rift did that—that weird thing with his wings when he first looked at it a little too long. He’d figured it was probably the best option, if he was going to spend all this time around it. Might as well make it scientific and all that.
He’s not really closer to understanding what exactly it’s doing to him, but whatever. He’s pretty sure it’s some kind of radioactivity, but that’s honestly the tamest explanation for something like this on Hermitcraft. Hermits have a way of attaching themselves to their bases, and their bases attach right back—hence why Grian is now wrestling with a very cool-looking but annoyingly vision-impairing sculk infection—and that’s just how it is; last season, Grian’s wings had decided to turn dark with the night sky of Midnight Alley, a bit of thematic aesthetic that had only become more relevant once the more cosmic implications of the seasons had made themselves known.
The void wings had faded soon after their landing, leaving flightless, mossy-green feathers in their wake, and Grian’d been content to just leave them like that until they decided to pick up a new change. It wasn’t really his fault that the Rift was what stuck itself to his wings’ feathers this time; he didn’t make the Rift, and surely it wasn’t his fault for staying down there long enough to sprout a second pair after the whole beacon fiasco.
The third pair might have been his fault though. Just a bit. Though, really, if you thought about it, that had been in the name of scientific experimentation. He now had another pair of sleek wings grafted to his lower back and a third pair plastered to the sides of his hips. Which was fine, honestly. He thought they looked cool and they probably wouldn’t be permanent once he shifted gears to the next season, so all it really demanded from him was a modification to his wardrobe and he was good as new. The tail, too, could probably be attributed to the Rift; it seemed like it had appeared overnight to help him with flight balance, and Grian certainly wasn’t going to complain about anything that helped him fly better. His ears were starting to itch at the tips, which was annoying, and probably meant he might get a fourth pair soon, but hey. In the name of science.
He really didn’t mean to spend the whole night down there. For all his faults, Grian wasn’t a half-bad scientist. He understood the necessity of control groups and only changing one variable at a time in order to get unbiased, measured results. One could argue that a kindergartner probably grasped those concepts as well, but he was rather proud of them, and did well to keep them present in his own experiments. So Grian would only spend controlled intervals of time down with the Rift, mostly making sure Grumbot Prime was still operating, that his machine was all set, and tightening the bolts on the heavy girders that supported the overhead rock in the cavern. He was careful never to touch or draw too close to the Rift, for fear its cloying energy would accelerate or ruin his experiments with background radiation.
Grian knew he’d fallen asleep on top of the girders, because that was the last thing he remembered working on. He didn’t really know how he hadn’t taken any fall damage by the time he woke up, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and there were far more pressing matters at hand. Namely, that he was about mouth-deep in the Rift, and that its energy was currently trying to tear him apart like a laundry machine set to high.
The Rift’s energy was all movement and light. He could feel it permeate the half of his body stuck inside it as soon as he was conscious enough to think about where he was. Grian tried his best to suck in a breath of air and wiggle his way out of the fissure like he was swimming up through the ocean, and eventually this strategy worked. He broke free of the tide with a soft schlucking noise, which would have been mildly worrying if not for everything else going on at the moment.
Grian panted slightly, staring at his limbs, making sure he still had all his fingers and everything. Five fingers on each hand, though each of his fingernails looked sharper than they had before. He made a mental note to write that down in his log, even if the experiment’s integrity was shattered now. All seemed well at first glance, which was fortunate; he wouldn’t put it past the Rift to try and eat one of his arms. Or steal his hair, or something weird like that.
His arm felt funny, a kind of pins and needles situation at work along the muscles. Grian shook it out, massaging his hand to return its feeling, but to his surprise, it just… started glowing. Same purple as the Rift and everything. He shook it again, experimentally, and it kept glowing.
Grian frowned. “Hm. That’s unexpected.”
The log would hear all about this later. He’d definitely have to run some more tests (tests required thinking really hard about doing magic things with his laser hand—things like killing Scar, sorting his shulkers—impossible stuff like that).
He stared at the Rift, his hands on his hips. “Couldn’t you have waited just a few more days for me to see some more background stuff happen? God, this is probably gonna accelerate the process by loads!”
The Rift, rather impolitely, did not respond. Grian stuck his tongue out at it. Rude.
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Ultimately, I think one of the worst things Hopes does wrt its writing of Claude is take out all of the complexities and contradictions that had made him so interesting to begin with.
OG Claude lies and manipulates people and closes himself off while still searching for the truth and wanting people to come together and be open with each other, because of how his traumas meld together with his dreams. He says that he'll do whatever it takes to get what he wants and shows off opportunistic tendencies and then buckles at the first sight of innocents getting hurt, because no matter how much he wants what he wants he still prioritizes the lives of the people around him over anything else. He knows of people's capacity to hurt others for petty or illogical reasons - was raised with that knowledge beating its existence into him - and yet still dreams of a world where people of different lands and cultures can still be friends, because that is how tightly he holds onto his dreams. He's a kind person with the capacity for being a dick, and his contradictions add on so much to his character; they in large part are his character.
Hopes Claude? He lies and manipulates people and closes himself off... and that's it. He says he'll do whatever it takes to get what he wants... and he does. He knows of people's capacity to hurt others for petty or illogical reasons... and has no real dreams of stopping it (or dreams of anything in the future really, by his own admission) and he indulges in that very behavior himself, seemingly without any awareness. He is untrustworthy, and manipulative, and opportunist... and that's it. What you see is what you get. And if this were a character unto themselves, if we're kind and we ignore all of the other issues with Hopes!Claude's writing, that would be a fun enough villain to follow around.
But it's not; this is supposed to be Claude. This is a character who has so much of his foundations be built on the idea that what he presents on the surface isn't all that he seems. That he's more than a character who is just "tee hee I'm only pretending to be nice but I'm actually eeeeevil evil evil evil evil evil evil," but someone who both uses kindness as a means to an end and embodies it genuinely. Warm yet calculated, a good man with real flaws - THAT is who Claude is. Hopes Claude is who Claude is if you strip him of any complexity - He Is Only Pretending To Be Good, But Actually He Is Bad.
He's just... easier to swallow, in a sense. Claude is a good person who is willing and able to do bad things, but only up to a very specific, very clear point, all for a good dream he's held onto for years and plans extensively to make a reality in the future; Clyde is a shit person who's willing to do everything short of bombing specifically whatever land he himself is ruling, all for what essentially amounts to no concrete purpose. There's no need to think about Clyde as hard, since he just does what he does because he's doing it and that's enough.
It's why I'm glad I am Dev-Approved to just fuckin' ignore Hopes entirely as a horrific fever dream, because Hopes does not understand what made Claude so lovable at all
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