B’s-LOG June 2021 - Shuuen No Virche Special Feature Translation [Illustrator Comments]

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.

- I’m not silly-vanilly >:[

Why should I make a “Alive” animatic, if I can just I can do funny things like this

Urgent Orders! Recover the Hidden Fortune (5/5)

Story Description:

Re-Destro asks Geten, Toga, and Mr. Compress to retrieve a secret package from a sketchy bank. The three reach the bank, but it's surrounded by Heroes due to an ongoing bank robbery!

Preview:

Pls rant about non romance cole…he’s my favorite character in anything, ever and it feels so sad that we never got to have a deeper relationship w him. Like the mechanics/possible lore of having a romance with a spirit are so tantalizingly interesting but no…also doubting we will see him in veil guard which leaves me so so broken …

*looks at their pile of unpacked feelings about cole*

so ૮( ◡̀_◡́)ა where to start....................

first of all uh! im not good at talking! that's why i draw phphp but i'll try my best to resurrect my memories from 2014 and share it with you!! sorry if it will sound weird, english is not my native language! 

well WELL from the begining then. i remember spending hours  more like days hhhh thinking about how weird and cool the recruiting scene with cole is? later when he is already with the inquisition, our party is either on guard around him or kinda treats him like he is helpless and needs special attention or guidance or something like that? demonising someone like him or framing them as in need of help are like textbook behavior ofc and im not here to be a hater, i just noticed it? moments with solas and varric fighting over him like a divorced couple are super cute for sure!!

but i remember being confused because excuse me, out of all of them, this guy??, this feral bat that is chilling on the ceiling like it's a lounge-zone inside Lucius' head, created especially for him?

he is confident. also a little bit nervous, a bunch mysterious and just ghostly cool. but also confident. (im not saying this confidence is not misplaced sometimes btw x) he even tells you that if you'll leave your head you'll die! what a jokester (҂ ꒦ິヮ꒦ິ)

and the whole quest with templars and envy are soooo horror coded, i love it!! it looked a bit silly, sure

(even after so many years im not able to get rid of the image in my brain phphphp) 

but it's still a very interesting quest!! dorian is ✨the bestie✨ but i'm always picking templars bc the implications of the story are just so good

1. its placed at the beginning of the game and your character is probably confused and anxious and dont yet worked out the routine of how to deal with their new title\powers + not every inquisitor character would want to be in the spotlight.

imagine you suddenly got yourself into position where a lot of people looking up to you, listening to what you saying, placing their hopes on you or waiting for you to fail? this is terrible! id 1000% just jumped out of a cliff!!! a small one, but still 

2. you meeting the guy who basically came from a place you now have unlimited access to.

he is: a) almost as confused as you are b) possibly came to this world without knowing consequences of that decision c) along the way he is figuring out how to be himself in the environment that is nothing like where he used to live. wow thats just like forced immigration *nervous laugh*

3. and let's not forget that you are meeting him inside your head and you can say to him "you look familiar".

dont know about you but apparently i dont need much to start screaming ¯(ツ)/¯

also can i just spend the moment to say that this is three (3) identical dialogue options??????????

the screenshot is from here btw

how awesome would it be to be able to figure out stuff together? to find comfort in someone, with someone who barely experienced it this way? to build on your strong sides? like "hope" for cole and i guess "unhingedness" for the inquisitor? i bet they would ground each other easily as well: cole distracting inq by being unintentionally mischievous and inq would have a notepad with cole's "firsts ____" or they would just read together. oh im such a sucker for hurt\comfort\some things cant be healed stuff uaaaaaaaaa

ALSO THE "FORGET" THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the drama the horror the tension!!!!!!!! you can fight me over this but heres the thought:

cole being so stressed that he is erasing\being on the edge of erasing the inquisitor's memories??????

i got the feeling that cole's confidence in the concept of "help" is, among other things, makes him being able to zoom in on something borderline obsessively? or vise versa - dismissively, not noticing "it hurts, its not for the better"? he thanks you when you promise to kill him, he cries when you do not. i swear this man (─ ‿ ─)

+quick addition bc im not entirely sure: so if i got it right, the anchor makes the inquisitor "too bright" to read? so among all the people we know about inq is the one that cole can't truly empathise on this lvl? on spiritual lvl you might say lsdkjflksdjflkj sorry!!!!! but jokes aside,this is like the perfect ground to build both comforting stories 

"someone from the party notices that cole is hanging near inq before inq do, and when asked he explains it by saying something like "dry warm skin. the air is stilled with quiet, easy to breathe. i followed the shining whispers and then i was followed no more" with the most plain face possible? "

and "today for lunch i have glass" kind of stories, like "the inquisitor is cornered and possibly bleeding and probably on the verge of passing out and they know that situation is bad and no one should follow/find them, "it's better to wait it out and deal with it on my own" kind of clown behavior. so they laugh tiredly at how pathetic they are, maybe remembering something similar from their childhood, remarks from their sibling for ex., and just trying their best to not think about how they need cole's help, cole's presence. the sense of safety that comes when he is around" 

uh!!! that wasnt neither quick or painless so i'll go make a tea wait a second please

im back!! so since i talked about the forget thing i must confess - i dont really like cole's personal quest???? again, im not complaining or anything but i remember feeling kinda empty while playing it? like deep inside me, there was something sad, but it was so far away,i coudn't even feel it properly?

both human and spirit versions of his ending made me feel like the distance between you and him lengthened, and maybe you could do something about it before but now? this "something" is missing and you're lost and can't even tell for sure if theres was a chance to do something in the first place? and cole just moved on? its super logical considering he is not a romance option but phphph so, i rarely romance someone in games, partly bc rpg tends to be a little horny and im that kind of ace who is not interested in this, partly bc i tend to pay attention to non-romanceable characters, so when i started to explore last da:i dlc and i saw cole having gf i was like "well ouch".

imagine your inq has a crush on cole but they never were able to say it clearly?

mb it was a melancholic slowburn, and your character was going through too much and felt like burdening cole with their problems would be unfair?

maybe they tried but the timing was wrong, the words felt stupid, and their hands felt too dirty, too guilty?

oh anon its been ten years and its still huuuuuurts!!!! if you following me for a while you know that im an edge lord in poor disguise so its not surprising for neither you or me that i ended up rumbling about inexplicable sadness and crushing existential guilt, but sorry for that anyway!! if anyone would want me to talk about something specific, or to draw something - im here, staring at the wall, listening to cole's banter :') thank you for the wonderful question tho, it was more than just nice to return back to this ship. im so agreeing with you about cole being the fave character from everything, but i also understand that this could mean being very unsatisfied with the way he was portrayed at some points or just with the fact that characters like him are rare so im sending you warm and tight hugs and a little sketch!! <3 

let's collectively accept the fact that dav gonna be a beautiful mess, we gonna love it (passionately), we gonna be hurt by it (not surprisingly) and COLE FOREVER WILL BE THE BEST DA CHARACTER EVER IM NOT GONNA CHANGE MY MIND FIGHT ME

our secret thing

succession 1.09 pre-nuptial

Today I am revisiting an analysis I made on Matthias Czernin, the Puppeteer, who is the current upcoming survivor in idv. I'm going briefly discuss his design before making some speculations about his kit.

So first, let's talk about Main Matthias (the actual character, not the puppet). First of all, he's wearing lots of black and grey, very dark colours. This may point to him having an introverted personality, but it could also have to do with his surname, Czernin, meaning "black". His clothes are also traditional clothing, speculated to be either Czech or Polish. It's likely he's Czech based on his surname. He's also noticeably incredibly injured, his face has scars, his shoulder is ripped up, his hair is uneven and he's missing his left eye. I think he suffered some kind of accident or abuse that left him with scars, or his injuries came from his time in the manor as we know some survivors killed their teammates before matches even began. The name "Czernin" was given to a man who survived a massacre by villagers who found him, which makes me believe his parents may have been killed but they managed to keep him safe until someone found him.

His puppet, who I shall dub "Minitthias" until it gets a proper name, seems to look like Matthias as a child, full of joy and energy. I think Matthias made Minitthias to cope with some kind of trauma, as generally puppets aren't reflections of the puppeteer but rather individual characters. Perhaps he tried to heal his damaged inner child?

It's been speculated in leaks that Matthias will be a contain type with rescue capabilities, which helps to combat the popular theory that he'll just be a better Tracy (seriously, Netease, just buff her. It's not that hard) and that he'll be able to turn into his puppet. I think he'll have some kind of debuffs that will become buffs in puppet form and some buffs that become debuffs in puppet form, perhaps Matthias is a slow baulter but Minitthias is faster, or Minitthias is a slow decoder while Matthias can do it faster. These make sense because a puppeteer would have good hand eye coordination, which would help with decoding, whilst the puppet will always be clumsier, and Matthias is so injured that the puppet will always be faster than him. I also think Matthias may be like Luca in that he'll have a smaller range of detecting a terror radius as he doesn't have his left eye, he might have lower situational awareness on his left side.

Anyway, i will not apologise for the person i will become on February 1, I am so excited for him. I might make an update when his PV releases. Happy new year, folks.

Oh, the full subtitle has even more concerning things to it! (Mind you this is machine translated, but still!!)

The piece that has become a puppet to protect the King.

All the pieces gain honor and are shattered for him.

Innocence is sometimes cruel,

By the time you realize it, it's checkmate.

If his story really does end up fitting the Czernin legend/wanting to seem normal, it could definitely be something along the lines of wanting his innocence back/to become carefree again! (Esp since the Japanese announcement for him describes him as delicate/sensitive and timid, with a contrasting doll.)

And for context in case it helps your analysis, here's his Weibo poster! :) The flooring and the trees reminded me of Darkwoods.

Today I am revisiting an analysis I made on Matthias Czernin, the Puppeteer, who is the current upcoming survivor in idv. I'm going briefly discuss his design before making some speculations about his kit.

So first, let's talk about Main Matthias (the actual character, not the puppet). First of all, he's wearing lots of black and grey, very dark colours. This may point to him having an introverted personality, but it could also have to do with his surname, Czernin, meaning "black". His clothes are also traditional clothing, speculated to be either Czech or Polish. It's likely he's Czech based on his surname. He's also noticeably incredibly injured, his face has scars, his shoulder is ripped up, his hair is uneven and he's missing his left eye. I think he suffered some kind of accident or abuse that left him with scars, or his injuries came from his time in the manor as we know some survivors killed their teammates before matches even began. The name "Czernin" was given to a man who survived a massacre by villagers who found him, which makes me believe his parents may have been killed but they managed to keep him safe until someone found him.

His puppet, who I shall dub "Minitthias" until it gets a proper name, seems to look like Matthias as a child, full of joy and energy. I think Matthias made Minitthias to cope with some kind of trauma, as generally puppets aren't reflections of the puppeteer but rather individual characters. Perhaps he tried to heal his damaged inner child?

It's been speculated in leaks that Matthias will be a contain type with rescue capabilities, which helps to combat the popular theory that he'll just be a better Tracy (seriously, Netease, just buff her. It's not that hard) and that he'll be able to turn into his puppet. I think he'll have some kind of debuffs that will become buffs in puppet form and some buffs that become debuffs in puppet form, perhaps Matthias is a slow baulter but Minitthias is faster, or Minitthias is a slow decoder while Matthias can do it faster. These make sense because a puppeteer would have good hand eye coordination, which would help with decoding, whilst the puppet will always be clumsier, and Matthias is so injured that the puppet will always be faster than him. I also think Matthias may be like Luca in that he'll have a smaller range of detecting a terror radius as he doesn't have his left eye, he might have lower situational awareness on his left side.

Anyway, i will not apologise for the person i will become on February 1, I am so excited for him. I might make an update when his PV releases. Happy new year, folks.

was this your boyhood vision?