scio, sweetheart

she's generally accurate about remembering appearances, particularly bodily condition, but shares a lot of her brother's blindspots around equipment. additionally pretty bad with names, meaning her marcille can't give accurate accounts of family members falin does actually know about for instance

falin!senshi is basically a wordless cooking machine, amiable but functionally nonverbal. sort of benevolent mysterious but eternally busy figure

senshi. were i to realize this mechanically in the story itd play off of the fact that she doesn't know him very well at all. however i think even in a timeline where she knows him as well as the others her impressions of him are very. indistinct

generally more conniving. I don't think falin regards him as particularly mean but does see him as quite smart and shrewd. These traits get very exaggerated in her brain until he's more of a trickster figure than the real chilchuck

in contrast to marcilles/senshi's, falin's chilchuck looks older than the real deal, and is a little bit taller. falin doesn't have as hard a time wrapping her brain around the idea of him being her senior. i think he's also a little more bugs bunny wascally wabbit, prone to meaner jokes and-

if pressed on any given spell she usually defaults to falins methods ("its like-...FWOOSH. The ZOW. you know?")

marcille is similarly accurate (falin is the only one to get her hairstyle right) but talks about 3x as much as the real marcille. the running bit is no one else can get a word in edgewise once she gets started. She's also more unflappable, but struggles to explain the mechanics of her own magic

hes a little more dashing and level headed than the real deal, and more likely to step up into a leadership role even in circumstances that don't really call for it

her laios is obviously very close to the real thing, near indistinguishable at first glance. contrary to the rest of the party falin listens when laios is talking about monsters meaning she has similar ability to dispense trivia. the distinguisher is falin's laios is a little bit. cooler. more stoic

posting to get it out of my brain so i can sleep, benighted by thoughts of falin's versions of each party member in the shapeshifter chapters

the water-bearer ♒️⭐️✨ #witchhatatelier

behind the scenes
#ffxiv

sjol looking at the viewer out of the corner of one bright red eye. a shard of sunlight cuts across her face and lights up the messy bundle of her hair. leaves and branches stretch over her from an open window.

zenos in profile, eyes closed in a tranquil expression as sunlight pours behind her and over the golden crown of her hair. the same leaves and branches stretch across her from the open window.

your love's a bonnie snare

#gpose | #sjolzenos

YOURE FINE. IVE COME TO FIND LAIOS HAS THIS EFFECT

CHILCHUCK!!

crazy that this is the only thing we get out of the touden mom (sort of)

unless izutsumi is regarded as contaminated either way? so it doesn't matter what's cast on her

this is another one where i'd be curious to see the translation notes. this phrasing implies that the one around her neck was also black magic, which feels unlikely give shuro's family attitude on the topic

PEAK RETURNS

LAIOS MICROAGGRESSION MOMENT

(in a similar way where marcille's chilchuck doesn't see any issue asking other people for help)

its confirmed in the chart later a lot of laios' impressions of marcille are shifted by the resurrection. so it tracks to me that his vision of her has basically emptied out of any impulse but to save falin. also might be his own morals cross contaminating it

senshi's chilchuck and marcille's senshi also get disqualified on equipment grounds. they don't know much about each other's fields. senshi-chilchuck's tools also look more like toys to me, connecting how he sees chilchuck as a much smaller child

small catch i like, laios' memory of marcille's grimoire is close enough that only marcille can tell the difference, because laios has actually studied her grimoire. its the one equipment piece he knows in his party.

because violence is a tool of control for kabru! in the same way eating is a tool of control for the lion

i also think its interesting how noted humanist kabru has an easier time making himself rationalize killing other humans than eating the monsters he wants dead. part of that is dungeon mechanics de-staking murder a little bit obviously. but it speaks to a relationship of control

i think with the addition of the winged lions monolgue, this snaps into clarity. eating is the process by which something is understood. and kabru doesn't want to understand monsters! he wants them eradicated

this is the split that interests me. "kabru is afraid of monsters and so doesn't want to eat them" is straightforward enough, but insufficient. lots of characters are scared of monster. laios has in fact deliberately sought out monsters he's afraid of for the purpose of eating them.

i dont think this would have to be innately regressive of anything but is i think at the core of a lot of the ambiguity she evidently feels on the topic

i dont like going too hard on shuro because i do think his affection is rooted in plenty of more concrete things but there's something about the specific shift occurring when out of nowhere gender is projected onto falin.