valeriefauxnom

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia With A Definite Deficiency in Description

Part 2 to this:

The entire collection of adventurer's stories, as summarized by Ranzal:

Euden endeavors to instruct Good Morals in the Youth, at age 17+:

Euden, self reporting by saying this 2 minutes before doing exactly that:

And, last but not least as an in-joke for the well-versed in dragalia running jokes, quite possibly the only time in the entire game where curry is mentioned without Leonidas soon inexplicably manifesting in the vicinity despite the lack of sense it'd make for him to be there:

#dragalia lost #dragalia #Dragalia Out of Context #I propose the sole reason Leonidas did not die in Stranded Scions was because Chelle deliberately invoked the curry magic. Discuss. #Dragalia was a Very Serious Game(tm) #Anyways let's get back to our regularly-scheduled attempted+successful fratricide and discussions of predetermination!

[valeriefauxnom]

Scaling the Walls of a Mystery as summarized by poorly-edited Onion headlines, part 2!

(as of ch. 21, though, Leonidas simultaneously thinks the headline refers to Euden)

(circa 19-20 with the whole Sol Source+break in thing...)

(Honestly the entire fic right there, and so is the next one...)

(See latest chapter for context+surrounding drama)

(collective NPC reactions that aren't in The Know of 'what's the deal with Euden'?)

Honestly the next one's just standard Euden than Scaling specific based on some of his quickness to jump to suspicious comments in canon ("no more...just let it end" /"And if that means I die trying to do it, I don't really much care!" ahem ahem), but, well...

And last but not least...

#scaling the walls of a mystery #dragalia memes #onion headlines #Now that I finally have an easy way to turn images transparent and remove backgrounds it's so much easier to meme!!

[valeriefauxnom]

As we all know, there were some discarded or hastily-resolved plotlines the team generally tried to wrap up. The Northern drama with Not!Russia and all that, for instance, was 'resolved' in Valyx's story, the last New Year's event tried to get that resolved, etc. But not every running thread was resolved: the Ex Machina line, the Syndicate line, and more.

But in the main story, they also weren't fully able to resolve all the plotlines they were teasing or setting up/leaving open. Leonidas, as I've talked about, likely could've became another source of conflict eventually since some of his goals are still disagreeable, and his relations with Ilia and Mordecai is unexplored, for one of the family in the running for the 'most likely to be executed for blasphemy by the Ilian church' award.

One example of which is Origa. Yes, she had a whole major part in the Apostles' events, and later tried to claw her way to main story relevancy in the final hours, but she herself was initially hinting to another particular aim that never really was explored.

Origa takes particular interest in Euden and to a lesser degree Zethia. She's interested enough that she's willing to risk outright war with some of the biggest powerhouses of South Alberia even in the attempt to get to Euden, at least. New Alberia, of course, as nations don't take very kindly to imprisoning their heads of state. Leonidas as head of both New Alberia and 'Alberia' probably wouldn't take very kindly to it either regardless of any degree of personal fondness and would want to send a message. Heck, even Emile might not appreciate the notion that Grams Curia thinks it can act against his family, or even in a 'only I can do that!' way.

Granted, this is mixed in with a hearty dose of patriotism backed with some military might and knowledge that South Grastea's chaotic state is the best chance she has at getting ahold of Euden, waltzing right into Grams with relatively little protection.

...But it's still a very bold move, so much so that even puppet King Basel is predicted to kick up a fuss with what power he has left rather than being focused on keeping the puppeteers behind his strings happy with him.

And he does! The royal guard does intervene against the Templars to buy an out for the gang.

Origa and the Templars she commands, though, are desperate enough to not even try and dress up their intentions by the end. She's desperate, not even attempting to try and keep her and Graht's involvement in this on the down low just to disguise their involvement if anyone of the gang did escape. Chips are all in.

Why, though? What could possibly be so compelling to risk all this, to act so boldly? She's even ignoring Chelle, who would be a very attractive target even if she only knows a fraction of the degree Chelle's spy network works in.

Here's where we start running into the whole 'never resolved or explored' hindrance, but she does comment these things, before and after Euden arrives/escapes:

She overall seems most interested in his pacts? And, of course, feeling like she's won. This is where I get highly speculative.

Officially, the team tried to handwave this plot in the span of like two lines:

I, however, don't buy it as the complete truth.

I think Origa is a bit too practical and cold for this to solely be a passion project of 'striking back' at the 'fortunate', though. If they truly were intending that route, I'd have more expected to see a descent from her into Agito or something since that's a common modus operandi there. It might be a component of it, no doubt, but not the only one.

I think she was also interested in Euden's (and possibly Zethia's, on a longer run) powers, especially if she could find a way to acquire them herself. If we combine it with the other running thread of her and Satan, it stands to reason she might have been interested in gaining power to be on a more equal footing when dealing with a demon overlord.

Heck, for all I know, she could've just been interested in dragonblood itself to those aims, ready to go all mad-science-like, since the royal fam's blood seems like it might be a hot commodity as a ritual reagent/power source. As seen in the whole Ace Attorney: Jupiter edition, the resident baddies of that town were jumping through hoops trying to get Euden to 'donate' some, and outright resorted to dropping down from the ceiling and nicking him that way once all pretense failed.

(Will I ever not find a way to include this event just for it being a prime example of Dragalia's particular brand of crack? Never.)

That aside, it also saw use in Delphi's story:

...and as a magic sealing agent to keep some of their particular skeletons regarding draconic matters in the closet.

All I'm saying is, there seems to be quite a few uses beyond just, 'possibly enables you to form a pact and shapeshift' (since dragonblood isn't quite as nifty or guaranteed a power as it seems and is its own danger, as I've gone over here and here) Uses that Origa might have been interested in, especially now that Euden might be hyped up on Morsayati power in the rumor mill. Maybe trying to forcibly get a few pointers on how to contain a demon overlord or two.

So, uh, yeah, that's a lot to say that I'm not completely convinced Origia was just having a jealous year or life and not craving some sweet sweet dragonblood to go commit more sins against nature and life and all that fun stuff! Whatever she wanted Euden for, it seemed to be very very important, enough to threaten almost-certain war for him. To that, while I can't answer conclusively, I think it lay in dragonblood and possibly his ties to Morsayati, whatever they were (since the Northern Clergy seems at least fairly cognizant of the circumstances of Euden's creation!).

Whatever the case, I do wish they were able to follow whatever original track they were originally planning with Origa, since I'm not sure I particularly care for the route the Northern Church and her went on as they tried to wrap things up with a bow.

#dragalia #dragalia lost

[valeriefauxnom]

Chapter 21 of Scaling the Walls of a Mystery is out!

In which changes are made and Leonidas dun goofed up and tripled down!

Exert from chapter, ~10k words of 238k:

“Children. I expect you to engage cordially. I will have to leave in a few minutes. Paperwork calls, alas. Just because we relax the standards to which we hold ourselves outside our own company does not provide an excuse to be quarreling verbally. Rhetoric is an art that you have learned, and if you have disagreements, you know better ways to get your point across than plain aggression.” Of course, they all could agree to that, verbally assenting readily with hums or words.  Exactly ten seconds of calm silence after Father departed their dinner as promised, however, verbal chaos erupted.

#scaling the walls of a mystery #dragalia lost fic #my writing

[valeriefauxnom]

As we get closer to a new Scaling chapter...

WillofWinnie made an addition to one of her previous creations to describe Scaling about what's upcoming!

That's right, Leonidas is joining Euden in the hole-digging business, and oh boy, Leonidas has to be number one in everything, so he dug himself quite the hole indeed! Only the biggest, deepest, most magnificent holes will suffice for prince no.1!

But yes, we are getting very close to a new chapter, surprisingly! I'm very excited to post the upcoming events, and it was a major factor for why the previous chapter took so long as I got distracted by writing parts of it instead of what I should be! (Well, that and deciding irrelevant things about the Scaling-verse, like some of the long term fates of the fam, including death order, etc. Like I said, irrelevant!)

#scaling the walls of a mystery

[valeriefauxnom]

Dev's (C)Leo Biases,

Or,

A Comprehensive History of How Leonidas Became Nearly Everyone's Object of Thirst

So, among the Dragalia Lost team, it was rather well known that they admitted to a strong Cleo bias.

It's pretty easy to see, in anything from Cleo's early spate of alts, like Dragonyule and Summer in quick succession, to the utterly random unique outfits they flaunted in ch.9 that you can just tell they drew for funsies but really liked them and wanted to put them in the game despite it serving no real purpose...

The dev team just really, really loved Cleo and drawing her. But after they apparently used up their Cleo allowance to make Gala Cleo probably the single strongest character in the game at the time, they cooled it down a bit.

However, as much as they were apparently thirsting over Cleo, I would joke that somewhere along the way, some part of the dev team, feeling desperate now that the yearly Cleo Allowance was running dry as they prepared to release Gala Cleo, decided to find a new fixation to quench their addiction.

And since Cleo was off-limits, they turned to the next best thing: crossing out the C in Cleo to find their newest substitute Dev Thirst character.

That's right, we're talking about the one and only Leonidas.

Leonidas had kinda just melded into the background with the rest of the siblings at this point to my observations. Sure, he was a campaign antagonist. People weren't particularly clamoring for him in particular over the other siblings, though. Honestly, I'd wager Emile was more popular at this stage, even in a 'love to hate' sense, just because we'd already seen him so much.

But then, it started. Whether it was art like this being posted on their twitter just a few scant months before G!Cleo's debut...

...They just seemed to have a certain edge in artworks featuring Mr. Curry in a way to make one squint and tilt your head sideways.

For instance:

It's one of those cases where you just kinda get a feeling the artist(s) found x attractive in a way that simultaneously still can give you a moment of self-doubt if that's not just you projecting because there's no blatantly obvious signs, you know? Whether it's something about the posing, or angles, whatever it is, I got this air increasingly whenever they put out any Leonidas art.

Thankfully, they decided to put me out of my misery and just flat out make what's likely the single most suggestive wyrmprint (or honestly art piece in general since Dragalia was thankfully very very very tame) starring none other than, you guessed it, Leonidas.

(Secret Cygames/Nintendo conversation, probably: "As you can see, it's vitally important that we draw this character in a speedo with sparkles around him." Nintendo: "...I'll allow it. This time.")

Even if he puts on some more clothes in the refined version, we're still back to that air I mentioned, as the shot focuses almost entirely on him instead of the wildly popular Chelle or his pet panther (which, yes, seemed to be an actual pet of his):

Even the Ilia-damned funny chibi comics got in on this thirst train as it went on and made quite possibly the raunchiest joke in the entire 400+ comic run featuring Leonidas, even if the exact same joke didn't make the translation overseas, however they tried. You can see a brief breakdown of that in THIS post.

Not content to restrict it to art and comics, Leonidas also dropped this line that is permanently engraved into my mind with just how shocking it was to see anything of this caliber in Dragalia, in his baby brother's story to boot!

At this point, I could no longer deny it: the devs and artists had collectively acquired a new fixation to satiate their once insatiable Cleo appetite in the form of Mr. Currymeister. (Don't worry about Emile there, he's just drowning, he does that all the time in waist-high water)

And this attitude even extends to in-universe, too! People increasingly fawned over the first prince, who very much was filling in the role of 'this prince you know vs. his hotter and more competent elder brother', as virtually represented by my expert skills in Microsoft Paint artistry as such:

Naturally, there was only so much time before the people IRL could succumb to Leonidas Fever (and no, this time we're not talking about all the people who were so devoted to this dude to effectively set themselves into a fatal, firey, steroid-filled death!) at this unrelenting onslaught.

It was hard not to see comments such as these that started pouring in (and yes, all of these were just about Leonidas exclusively):

(I'll attribute the misspelling to being overcome with Leonidas Fever, a grave illness indeed!)

(Another serious symptom: the decline of any self-preservation instinct around Leonidas, who is indeed Very Dangerous and Will Kill You!)

Ahem. You get the picture. Thus concludes the slow, insidious buildup from just another sibling for Euden to probably commit a whoopsie-daisy fratricide in the future to one of the fandom's favorite menaces, all carefully plotted-out by the collective efforts of devs who were the first to succumb to the sickness...Right?

This concludes my professional historical report on this very serious issue that I suspect lingers to this day. The Fever has but been put into remission; it has not faded yet.

Extra:

So a long time ago I commented that some of the royal family seemed to have pointier teeth than normal, which I speculated because they deliberated giving a bit more 'draconic' traits to define dragonblood, and I didn't realize how pervasive this was until I saw Emile's model there. Look at his fang!

...

...How did I forget the weapon skin of Leo's gun is additionally named "Royal Dominator"?

#The royal family truly robbed the bank with their genetics. Magic powers. Sharp-looking as a whole...and they have been for 300 years+! #dragalia lost #dragalia #leonidas #He's strong. He's handsome. He's a fantastic chef. He's had cat ears put on him in a comic. #the People were to put it bluntly Screwed or so I would reckon in my comprehensive study of #'why the heck are you guys thirsting over xyz character NOW?' #...Also a very formal scientific field. #I'm additionally glad in the end that Leo bore the brunt of this #Since at least he's likely 25+. A disappointingly high amount of media can't even manage that!

[valeriefauxnom]

Same Energy

(And no, I did not alter the Euden box there. There really just was a Euden with an innocent :-) face on in a box that just said, 'Go' as he had his sword drawn!)

#dragalia lost #dragalia #dragalia memes #Euden is getting ready to enact some extreme violence with a smile there!

[valeriefauxnom]

(you don't have to reply to this)

hi! not to be rude, but i think you've been formatting your dialogue incorrectly (from a grammatical standpoint). not sure if you're aware of it

idk how to explain it succintly but it should be like

"Dialogue," he said/shouted/yelled/explained.

"Dialogue." He smiled/shrugged/grimaced.

note the comma + uncapitalized 'he' for speaking verbs, and the period + capitalized 'he' for actions that complement speaking but aren't a Talking Verb (?? i hope that makes sense)

i can't directly link sites on anon but https://btleditorial.com/2018/07/16/punctuate-dialogue-in-fiction/ explains it well

mistakes from your recent chapter:

“I say, Midgardsormr, if you’re that upset being around these humans, why not just leave? You’ve already been sticking here in Sol Alberia for, what, weeks now?” She called out...

“Chthonius,” They greeted...

"she" and "they" shouldn't be capitalized

"...I also raise barriers between these sections, the outside, and my den, so that they do not bug me or escape.” He’d explained..."

similarly, "he'd" shouldn't be capitalized. and there should be a comma rather than a period after "escape" ("...so that they do not bug me or escape," he'd explained..."). the same way the example earlier with cthonius uses a comma

“...I can barely spread my wings here.” Jupiter critiqued...

“That is all the intruder had to say, Your Highness. Pardon for the interruption. I shall leave you to your work.” Leif said...

“...I might be able to find a more expeditious path to your destination.” Leif offered not three minutes after they exited the castle,

should be a comma, not a period, after "here," work," and "destination"

'offered' isn't always a verb that implies speaking, but in this case it does (since his offer is in his speech)

“I could ask the same of you, Netherwyrm, seeing as how you appeared quite resolute to not leave Clave Loy’elune,” Mercury smiled...

because smiling is an action that goes alongside the speaking, and isn't the speaking itself, it should be a new sentence ("...you appeared quite resolute to not leave Clave Loy'elune." Mercury smiled...")

“As a matter of fact…Yes,” Zodiark paused...

while the pause is relevant to him speaking, it's not the Speaking Action itself, so "Yes" should be followed by a period

just thought i'd point these out because this mistake is kinda prevalent in your fic and i'm not sure if it's intentional? have a great day!

Funnily enough, I'd actually looked up dialogue rules for some other things, since my default reflex is to capitalize after any dialogue, and had changed several things to lowercase.

And thank you for being polite, but in turn, not to sound flippant, but I have to say at this point I... just am not going to be screening for this in the past or future. If you can spot that many things in one chapter, you better believe the entire fic is going to be like that and probably worse, as you note it to be 'kinda prevalent', and, 220k words in (plus all my other works almost assuredly featuring this making it over 380k), the benefit to effort ratio to fix that one would be disproportionate for more nitty-gritty rules that I had to comb through many sites to find a single source aside your own that claimed several of the corrections to be made here.

So, in the end, I'm sorry to say that yes, your feedback is heard and appreciated, but no, I'm probably not going to fix most all examples nor particularly try to follow these rules as I write more chapters. My ultimate concerns when writing are that it is understandable, not flagrantly incorrect (for instance, distinguishing between 'two-too-to' and all that), working with previous and the proceeding dialogue, and in-character. Some of these are innocent mistakes, as I might have initially intended more dialogue to come after an action and put a comma where a period should have been, others are just borne of me never encountering this kind of direction in all my years of schooling despite having a degree.

That being said, thank you for reading, and I hope that it doesn't grind your gears so much as to stop! Even if it does, thank you for being polite about it all and I hope my response is understandable in turn. Have a nice day, too!

#inbox responses #scaling the walls of a mystery

[valeriefauxnom]

Euden's Headphones

...Have dragon wings on them, in Dragalia Lost's JP only Radio because of course they would! Basically, for Radio Castle, it seemed like they just had Cleo's and Euden's JP voice actors sit around and chat. But I still hadn't seen this art of them that they'd made for it.

Nevertheless, that is all. Dragon wing headphones.

#Euden: Anyways guys we're back to my list of the 1000 cutest dragons...picking it back up at number 13: Gloom Drake! #...Proceeds to immediately fall back in a catatonic state at seeing such cuteness and frustrating the rest of the group... #...Who tried to insist that he not be involved with this project but to no avail. #But he got a list done! Eventually! It only took 3 agonizing years for him+everyone around him but he got it! #This is my interpretation of what would happen if Comic!Euden and the gang got transported to a time with radio haha #In any case I hope someone might like seeing this kind of 'rare' art that we never would've naturally seen over here! #dragalia lost #dragalia

[valeriefauxnom]

And it's official / Chapter 20 of Scaling the Walls of a Mystery is up!

Scaling now has five thousand hits on AO3! I can't tell you how much I've appreciated all the feedback, kudos, comments, all of it for some wild project that started as pure wish fulfillment over a year ago!

And with that milestone, a new chapter, in which Chelle is Chelle and Euden gets a good lecture.

Exert from chapter (~8k of 228k):

“I brought you something, you little blighter,” Sir Altair announced, identifying himself as not just another nurse. Euden, mildly curious, cracked open an eye, but he failed to see anything aside from a rather weighty-looking book that he assumed was some sort of medical text, “Here.” The book joined the bell, as he laid it against the wooden panel at the edge of the bed to prop it upright so that Euden could see that its title was no book of anatomy or the like, but a collection of faerie tales for younger children. Not only that, he believed it was the very same book that he’d long heard stories from growing up in this very castle. Confused by this unprompted act of kindness, he turned his head up in confusion. I thought he’d be hopping mad… “I figured if you were gonna act like a child, I figured I’d get some reading material that was more your speed of late.” 

#scaling the walls of a mystery #my writing

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia Lost With A Distinct Lack of Context:

(Honestly all of Chitose's lines in this story qualify but I digress)

(Honestly, part two, all of Mym's stories are a goldmine for this and I actively have to restrain myself from showing all of it)

#Dragalia Lost #...was a very serious game. Uh-huh. Incredibly. #They just put on their crazy hat twice a month to channel utter crack into their translations and art. #And we all rejoiced. #For Dragalia fans: aside from some of the classics here I hope I could catch you off guard at least once! #...For any non-fans: Yes the game was just Like This approximately 50% of the time. The other half was royal drama and identity crises! #out of context

[valeriefauxnom]

A new ally has arrived! Scientist of Summer! After a conversation with my friend Valerie, I decided to draw Summer Phares. I did opt out on giving him my headcannoned long and light cover up to prevent sunburn, but this drawing took way longer than anticipated already. Looking at it, his shirt kinda looks like Euden's. That was unintentional, but ya know maybe the royal fam steals from each other's closets lol my siblings sure love to do that with me!

[valeriefauxnom]

Thank you so much for the gift!

An animation for my friend ValerieFauxNom! Expecting a trick? Get a treat instead! Happy April Fools, Val! (A holiday excuse to give you things lol)

This is based on a scene in Val's fic, Scaling the Walls of a Mystery (on Ao3), chapter 1, where Phares and Beren test out a local enigma's blood. Had this idea of making it a short animation for a while, and finally, my animation hyperfocus did its thing (well, more rigging/puppeting?). I will need to learn a lot and perhaps dabble in other programs and tools. I probably won't touch animation again until I invest in a newer drawing tablet with drivers that are supported within the last 12 years.

I do recommend the fic. And that's coming from a person who doesn't usually read anything longer than 8k.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the animation, Val!

#dragalia lost #I love the little touches like the slow blink. Well now indeed Beren and Phares!

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia Lost Team, presumably: Okay, we wanna use that song of yours, Daoko, but the lyrics are maybe a little bit...suggestive for Nintendo. Can we just make a light and happy instrumental tune of it that players can enjoy as they play (we can still have the vocal tracks, but we'll hide 'em a bit so they're not quite as in Nintendo's face when they're testing it, 'kay?)

Daoko, presumably: Mh-hm.

(Insert many instrumental tracks)

Also Dragalia Lost Team: Okay, we need something happy for the summoning song. We think we found a good tune, and even a good lyric segment. At least, we heard the localization team overseas working on it was bopping to it. How's this sound?

The lyrics highlighted in question (not even a joke, these are actually the lyrics in the summoning song):

Bang, bang, bang, bang, love and die, A boy and a girl, lovers' suicide, Bang, bang, bang, bang, love and die, Shoot with a blue gun, ....(repeat first 3 lines)... ...I'll dye you blue!

...So yeah, if you didn't know, that's the section of Bang! Dragalia used, lyrics and all, for summoning. Honestly have no idea why they chose that one or got away with it, with Nintendo's name in the mix, but it sure was funny when I found out some years ago! Rather funny to have such a 'wholesome' game have some very unwholesome lyrics in probably one of the most played songs in game!

Bonus round:

This isn't actually verified despite my attempts, but I am 95% sure in my amateur ears that have enough trouble trying to understand what people are saying in English to begin with, that in the Greatwyrm theme, Crasher, at about the 1:55 minute mark, there's a random interjection of, 'kick my ass'.

Please check this one out for yourself, here. Maybe it was just the me of a few years ago projecting my will to finally beat one of those fights when they first released when you basically needed the entire 5min fight scripted in your head+3 other people that also knew their specific role and the fight, but I still cannot unhear it nor process what else it might be.

That is all.

#dragalia lost #hopefully I didn't ruin anyone's innocent hopes of happy bop with the summoning song! #But darn dragalia songs were sometimes mood/tone whiplash #Sometimes they seemed designed for the event in question...others just something they threw in. #Or at least I think so. Otherwise I'm very concerned about the sibling whose perspective would be described in 'It's All Fiction'!

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia's comics had a few running jokes.

One of them, however, went very unnoticed: Comic!Euden's intense yearning to break free of the chibi style and become more sharply angled/'cool-looking' like the most of his siblings are drawn in-game.

Don't believe me?

Well, it starts in the adventurer's guide they released at the start of the game, with this frame:

He Yearns(tm) for the pointy chin and nose as seen on his siblings!

It also later pops up in this, in which Comic!Euden contemplates growing a mustache or beard since he thinks they look 'dignified' (even if his imagining of a mustache is anything but!)

But that's not all!

He later tries on Victor's joke glasses, to this effect:

Euden's just so happy there he looks 'cool' now, like a gentleman, that Victor can't break it to him that no, no he does not look any more dignified than his normal chibi-styled self.

He also immediately starts dreaming of a 'cool new look' and immediately dozes off to it, again to a more sharply-angled imagining of himself and his friends.

...No wonder he's so shocked, almost horrified, upon seeing Chitose turn most the group 'cute', because that's the aesthetic he's been desperately trying to escape since day 1!

Then again, comic Euden also would apparently turn catatonic for the rest of the day upon seeing anything too cute (typically the baby dragons), so maybe this is just him expressing some self-preservation for once in his life and trying to keep himself safe with his battle-buddies?

That's all the instances I can recall casually, but maybe there might be one or two more...

Long story short, comic!Euden seemed to deeply wish to be drawn more like this:

...While instead, he's stuck being drawn like this:

Someone needs to tell him that although the siblings are a bit more pointy in the comics...

...they weren't exactly fully espousing a 'cool aesthetic' replete with pointy noses and chins either!

As a last little joke, while unrelated to the actual post, the 'cool' Euden tends to self-envision actually pops up in this comic too!

#dragalia lost #dragalia #The Inherent Nobility of the Royal Family ladies and gentlemen! #I should compile the royal family's t-shirt's. They actually all seemed to have a different color from the ones we saw! #Leo's is orange-red. Euden's is pink and red. Emile's was...teal? #If I recall. #Still I want to know how the comic!siblings acquired t-shirts being Important Royalty and all...

[valeriefauxnom]

I can't believe I missed this line when writing this post about how Euden was primed for identity crises regardless of Nedrick:

Because honestly, that's the bulk of the ENTIRE SURROUNDING ARGUMENT I WAS MAKING, and lo and behold there's just this line casually hanging out in his base unit lines this entire time!

I spend what are likely pages drawing lines around the issue to try and grasp its definition and yet here Euden is just flat-out spelling it out in 9 words that he heavily bases his will to do things (which becomes his will to live) based on whether he feels needed, inherently external factors that when he's deprived of tend to cause him to give up outright now that he sees no more purpose in his life.

Sigh. Ilia, I even cited another of his base form's lines: "I've grieved and grown with Zethia. She needs me." And yet somehow miss this?!

To excuse myself, I'll just say that Dragalia Lost had a lot of text and whistle off innocently into the sunrise to write more Scaling!

#Euden is a mess and I stand by that. He's just sneaky about it sometimes! #He's the glacier meme personified: you're only catching the bright surface as the true mass lurks underneath. #Just The Problems Of Being Created With The Exclusively Selfless Part Of A God (tm) I guess!

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia's Knights of Glory art

Now, it's been gone over how Dragalia Lost actually used quite a bit of inspiration from one of Cygames' previous works, Knights of Glory, for anything from character designs to dragons.

Of course, this showed up quite literally with characters like Lea when they quite literally just had the "Knights of Glory" showcase, but it also showed up in characters ranging from Jakob to Mikoto to Jurota (also showcasing the alighting butterfly blade, also in Dragalia):

However funny it is to see who we came to know as different characters in a different media, though, the dragons are 10x funnier to look at.

You see, it seemed that Knights of Glory had a certain 'evolution system' to dragons, where they'd develop and grow more fancy, if they weren't inexplicably transforming into an attractive humanoid woman because of course-

And oh boy, we can kinda see alternative evolutionary paths for the Greatwyrms.

There's Midgardsormr, who seems to most closely resemble the fully evolved form from the start...(he also gained an element, as this dragon line apparently has no element!)

Mercury, who is in her middle phase:

Imagine a hydra Mercury!

...Brunhilda? Not very sure on this one. She might just be a new design, but here's my best guess for what dragon they might have been inspired from:

Of course, in her 'final form' if this was a dragon they used as inspiration.

Jupiter, whom I'd almost put in his middle stage for closeness of design:

Last but not least, poor Zodiark, who really got hammered with the skeletal dragon design and is also in his middle stage and is also drooling 24/7:

Where is his stomach? Where are his organs? Why is he bipedal?? He lost some bulk in his transition to Dragalia, too. Honestly, I like Dragalia Zodiark more than his inspiration here.

That's enough of full evolutionary trees for now, though.

Some other funny ones to me include:

-Silke turning into a skeletal horse on her final evolution:

-Baby Leviathan going :-D all the time:

-Baby Poseidon (honestly a lot of the babies are funny since we only knew their final forms, typically);

-Possibly Cat Sìth inspiration???

-Baby Zephyr:

-Baby Nidhogg, sitting all prim and proper and ready to watch Euden die still:

-Teenage...Satan? Having a evil little :) face going on there...

Speaking of, quite a few of the dragons were actually repurposed into bosses, as with Satan above, like everyone's favorite:

(We must not let Phraeganoth be revived! ...Until Bondforged Zethia's story, at least).

Might be a stretch here, but maaaaaybe a bit of Kai Yan in here?

The Hypnos/Thanatos/Mega Monarch Emile line's general design:

This is getting long enough as it is, but if you want to see a mix of some old with a lot of new art that they might have used as inspiration for more dragons/adventurers, here's the link I used to the collections of KoG artwork that people were able to preserve:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DragaliaLost/comments/9rtlnz/knights_of_glory_albums/

Hopefully you find it just as interesting and funny as I did perusing the old art!

#dragalia lost #dragalia #knights of glory #Sylvia is also unfortunately one of the ones to be hit by the 'inexplicably now a humanoid woman' for her final alas. #At least Dragalia even vaguely tried to balance it out with quite a few male humanoid dragons? #A different artbook but one of Dragalia's earlier drafts for Mars was a cool more salamander-esque dragon. Almost sad they didn't go with #...that one instead of Red Midgardsormr (he really does look like Red Mids underneath all that!). Yeah sure maybe thematic symbolism #representing the clash of ideals between Leonidas and Euden but still!