Imagine An Angels Of Death And A Forest Of Drizzling Rain Crossover- I Think There's Like One(?) Official

Ok, so, aparentlly, if you open the game on the RPG Maker program, like to translate or change something, you can see alternate conversations and rooms that were made, but never used in the came.

When Rachel and Zack are on the elevator heading to B1, this was an alternate conversation:

This is interesting, so i wanted to show you.

Some Shin art and rambling cause THE MAN NEEDS MORE APPRECIATION. Like- he only recently got a fandom page, I think???

In my opinion, the manga could've done a lot more with him too. Seriously, his corpse furniture shtick is pretty horrifying and everything, but imagine if he was a full blown scluptor. Making absolutely disgusting statues made of twisted and mutilated bodies and cheerfully calling it art. He could have also used all sorts of materials like burnt or decayed skin, or just something like Junji Ito vibes.

Though, I don't really wanna complain all too much- so here's some headcanons!

His floor is totally art-gallery themed. Like he uses that open space where Eddie later put his graveyard to present all his art like an actual display. (he's all about that PRESENTATION) Actually, this is probably, no, definitely canon, I'm sure of it.

His floor also has like, layers. You first see his furnitures, which would be incredibly off putting on it's own, but then you go deeper into the floor... and the "art" you find gets more and more grotesque and morbid.

He just has a bunch of instant ramen stuffed in his pantry. He does consider cooking art- but he's defnitely not that proficient at it. Plus, he uses most of his time making his sculptures, and forgets to properly eat a lot. (The ramen is the only thing he eats at this point)

He has a chainsaw. Why? Because he finds it the easiest way to sever body parts for whatever twisted thing he wants to make, and also because I like to imagine a cool standoff/fight with Zack and Shin in my head- and chainsaws would be incredibly cool with that

In an au where the killers aren't in that building- he'd totally take Eddie in. Like, I imagine Eddie ran away from home and Shin just agrees to let him stay at his apartment or whatever. Eddie would help Shin come up with sculpture ideas, and vice versa with Eddie's graves. Also, Eddie now only eats instant ramen like Shin does.

The twins names are Shinjitsu and Shintaro. I'm... not sure if they're even real names, but I call them that in my head and so it's canon to me.

A Dead Letter to Cathy

This is a short letter written from the point of view of Lucy, found in the Satsuriku no Tenshi Fanbook.

Written by Makoto Sanada, art by Negiyan, translated by me.

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New Listener's Guide to The Magnus Archives

Or, How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Scares

A lot of people seem to be getting into TMA lately so I thought I’d offer some basic advice for anyone curious about it.

Useful Resources

A full list of transcripts

Content warnings 

Note: The creators have straight up stated that they’re not gonna include sexual violence or explicit pet deaths.

Character guide for keeping track of names

So what exactly is The Magnus Archives?

Fundamentally, it’s a horror anthology podcast. The central conceit is that our protagonist is an archivist and each episode he makes an audio recording of a written statement that someone has made about their encounter with the paranormal. This format means that the particular flavour of horror can vary wildly from episode to episode.

But what about The Plot?

It may not seem like it at first but there’s a lot going on. Don’t worry about it though, you don’t have to keep meticulous notes to understand things. The characters spend plenty of time trying to figure things out and you can just take that journey with them. However, if you’re into cork-boards and red string, then absolutely, this is a great podcast for that. But you’re not gonna have a worse experience if you just want to sit back and get spooked.

And Jonathan Sims?

That would be our protagonist, his voice actor, and the show’s writer. Yes, it gets confusing at times. It’s not set in stone but people often use Jon, John, Jonathan or the archivist to refer to the character while Jonny refers to the real person.

New Episodes?

Nope, it was planned to run for 5 seasons and then it ended. However, there is a prequel/sequel/”sidequel” in the form of The Magnus Protocol.

VOLUME 1: CHAPTER 1

((Part 2 here since tumblr only allows 30 images per post!!)

A more literal interpretation of Jevil's "freedom" (also some rambling)

The last post I did on Jevil- I talked about how his "freedom" could be like a sort of "inner freedom." He is trapped physically, but free from the contraints of responsibility, society, morality, etc. Now, I think that mindset is exactly the thing that led him to do whatever he did to get imprisoned, but the freedom he talks about in game might be a different thing entirely.

The thing that got me thinking about that is a video by halfbreadchaos. (I forgot the specific video but check them out- they make great stuff) They led me to notice the fact that Jevils prison is very oddly positioned, and the entire "???" floor area as a whole is really strange as well.

The room itself looks eerily similar to that first area we wake up in on chapter 1. The creepy atmosphere, the color of the floors (kinda), and the torches are literally the same as the ones found in that pre-castle town area. The entire place looks so incredibly different from the rest of the card castle. The walls and surrounding area don't even seem to be like... there. Like it's some sort of abyss. Like the entire room is out of bounds of something.

Jevil's cell/room shares a very similar vibe in that aspect as well. On the outside, the bars just seem to lead into nothing. And even on the inside, It just looks... wrong. The spinning carousel thing is so different from anything else in the game. I mean, toby said it's made out of 2D parts, but it's obviously supposed to look kinda 3D. The characters aren't even standing on the thing properly. Even behind the carousel, it's just more nothingness.

____

Now, let's look at Jevils dialogue directly.

"BUT I'M FAST, FAST, CLEVER, CLEVER." "THEY LOST THE CHASE, AND LOCKED UP THEIR ENTIRE RACE." "BUILDING A PRISON AROUND THE WHOLE WORLD. NOW I'M THE ONLY FREE ONE." Ralsei: "But you're clearly the one behind bars..." "THINGS DON'T SEEM SUCH FROM HERE LIGHTNERS!"

Looking at this completely literally, this is what we can gather: The guards and/or Seam chased him around, but he was too fast and clever for them. They somehow decided to build a prison around the dark world and trapped everyone behind bars, making Jevil the only free one. This is obviously not the case. If we try to fit this interpretation into what we know about the dark world and Jevil's situation... it uh, kinda looks like he's joking about how it looks like everybody is trapped because he's looking at them through bars.

But that answer is pretty boring, isn't it? There is obviously a lot more we can read into the dialogue. Jevil is shown to speak with a certain bit of abstractness. This analysis is supposed to be a more literal interpretation, but it's clear we need to look a little more deeper than that.

____

Let's take what I brought up before the dialogue, along with some other points.

Jevil's prison is very clearly separated from the rest of the dark world. Hell, maybe even the rest of the game with how odd it is.

Jevil talks about how everybody else is trapped, and he is the only "free" one.

This freedom doesn't exactly seem to be "inner freedom," as he directly connects his prison with this "freedom" by inviting us "outside" when we use the key on the door.

They way he doesn't elaborate any further when we do enter his room, and because the characters don't seem to have like, any sudden revelations or something inside of the room, leads me to believe that it's that inherent oddness, that separation from the "normal" part of the game that Jevil is finding freedom in.

Nobody in the world of Deltarune technically has automony over their choices. Every single choice, every event, is because of the plot. All of these people are characters in a video game, able to be manipulated by higher forces on a whim. Gaster/the mysterious entity made Jevil realize this and drove him insane with the knowledge.

Now, Jevil doesn't actively dispise that fact like Spamton does. He might almost relish in it- as he did go on that "NOTHING MATTERS EVERYTHING IS A SIMULATION! UEEHEEHEE!!!" rampage that caused so much chaos.

But then he faced the consequences of his actions. His own coworker/quite possibily a good friend locked him up in this dark, creepy place far, far below where the regular prisoners are supposed to go. And it all felt quite... stupid.

"Look at all those little people, obediently following the rules of this worthless world. They don't realize, don't they? They've simply placed another peice in the great game being set up by the higher beings. They're just walking themselves closer and closer into their eventual end. It's almost as if... they're trapping themselves. Building a prison around all of them, allowing themselves to be puppeteered by the people who control the world.

Hah! I'm quite clever, aren't I? Thanks to what I've done, I've been relagated as even lesser than a side character, sitting in a little haven tucked away from the influences of the outside world... No, I'm the one looking from the outside this time. I'm the only one here who truly understands, aren't I? But it's not my job to enlighten such fools. I'll be content watching from the backseat as the chaos unfolds..."

___

I, uh... didn't mean to write a fanfic- but I'm pretty sure that's Jevil's mindset. He fully accepts this messed up world he's inside, but he defnitely wouldn't mind if he was granted a little more freedom. And somehow... that's what he got. As a secret boss, he's... basically fully separated from the main story, but his presence is still enough to make it clear he exists in the world.

He's "free" in a much more literal sense than I intially thought. After all, isn't being that pedestrian on the streets who (hopefully) doesn't get caught in the crossfire of the MC's the best freedom any story could give?

Ok, since some people really liked that scene with Zack talking about how he met Gray (wich you can read here, if you haven’t yet), I decided to take more screenshots of scenes that Makoto Sanada never used in the game, but are in the project.

Some are silly, but whatever. This is only in episode 2. On episode 3 there wasn’t much. I only remember a weird room? Nothing important, really.

So, here we go.

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idk if you've ever answered this before (probably, the answer is always probably) but is Bill, like... capable of empathy? Of sympathy? Of love (any kind) or compassion? I guess what I'm asking is how does he relate to other people? Are they all just tools and idle amusements, or does he develop any actual genuine (positive??) attachment to them?

Everything I know about him comes from 8+ year old memories of a cartoon I haven't rewatched since, and discourse I see through your blog, so I'm not sure what the canon consensus is but your word is god enough to me on at least your specific interpretation of Bill.

(I guess it would be moot to ask why he's so fucked up. Feel free to ignore any and all of this ask, it's 12 AM and I'm trawling the web before bed)

for my specific interpretation of Bill? Have this post about empathy and a couple of posts about romantic love. (Okay—three about romance.)

But now let's forget about my interpretation and talk canon.

Empathy! You can roughly split empathy into two categories: "I can logically identify and understand what you're feeling" empathy, and "when you're sad i feel sad and when you're happy I feel happy" empathy.

We absolutely know that Bill has "I understand what you're feeling" empathy, because he uses it again and again to manipulate his victims. He has VERY good emotional intelligence. He understands his victims' insecurities, their desires, how to make them feel happy, angry, ashamed, trustful, mistrustful; he knows when and how to manipulate them based on their mood to maximum effect; etc. We see it in how he manipulates Dipper & Mabel in the show; we see it in how he turns Ford against Fiddleford in Journal 3; we see it in TBOB and on thisisnotawebsitedotcom in the way he talks about how and why he manipulated Ford.

We have no evidence he experiences "I feel what you feel" empathy. That doesn't necessarily mean he DOESN'T, but there's no evidence for it. Never see him get excited just because someone else is excited, never see him cringe sympathetically when someone else is hurt. You could say "maybe on top of being a manipulation tactic, when Bill relates to Ford's estrangement from his family by talking about his destroyed universe, he's also feeling empathy for his situation," but you could also just as easily say "nah it's just manipulation."

Common sense would say well, if he feels other people's pain, it would be harder for him to manipulate, betray, and hurt people so blithely. But we're not talking about common sense, we're talking about canon evidence! It's possible for empathetic people to hurt other people; they can just... learn not to care about that person's feelings. Which is particularly easy to do if the target is someone the person sees as "less important" or dehumanizes them. Bill sees everyone as less important than him. We can't rule either way on whether or not he's got a capacity for emotional empathy we just never see. All we can say for sure is he doesn't appear to turn it on for anyone we see.

Though we see him come close. Although he doesn't feel with any of the Pines, we can see him relate to Ford (during Weirdmageddon, throughout TBOB), to Stan (on TINAWDC), and to Mabel (in TBOB and the Dipper & Mabel's Guide book) via projecting his struggles and beliefs on to them. But in a way this is sort of, reverse empathy?; it doesn't let him feel how they feel, but it makes him assume they feel the way he does.

Sympathy! The definitions of empathy vs sympathy vs compassion are contested so I'm gonna present the definitions I'm using for this post: empathy is "i [feel/understand] what you feel" and sympathy is "i care about how you feel." There's a couple of moments in his interactions with Ford in TBOB that are blatantly manipulative (when he shows Ford what's left of his dimension; to a lesser extent, when he "helps" Ford celebrate his birthday) that might also secondarily be fleeting displays of sympathy. It's ambiguous.

Compassion! Compassion is "i'm moved to help because of how you feel." There's a moment in TBOB when he gets so irritated at Puritan misogyny that he teaches a bunch of Puritan wives how to be witches and has a girls' night burning men at the stake with them. He apparently gets no benefits from this himself, aside from funsies. Is he motivated by compassion for the ladies or ONLY by irritation at how boring the men are? Again, ambiguous.

In TBOB when discussing his exploits in the Nightmare Realm, he mentions freeing patients from insane asylums and criminals from prisons. He also repeatedly mentions disliking captivity. He might be motivated by compassion derived from empathy for prisoners. He doesn't present his motives.

Love! He calls the Henchmaniacs his "family," repeatedly brings up their worries about being erased from reality, and says he takes his party hosting duties to them very seriously. We don't know whether he actually cared about them, or merely called them a family in recognition of their consistent loyalty and obedience. He's pretty disrespectful/violent toward them but that isn't incompatible with being emotionally invested in them beyond their utility. We don't have confirmation he cares for them, or confirmation he doesn't.

Hidden in TBOB and absolutely riddled through TINAWDC are references to his parents caring about him and tender quotes. When he's so blind drunk he doesn't know where he is, he tries to call his mom and asks her to make him a sandwich after school. We know he resents how they pathologized a mutation he was born with; beyond that we can't confirm whether or not he loved them; but just beneath the surface, he's unceasingly haunted by how they loved him.

Romantic love! I wrote a post about the evidence for/against romantic attraction in TBOB. He's confirmed to have at least two ex girlfriends; in the book, he mentions missing them both. He mentions having "seduced" galaxies; we don't know whether these seductions were sexual, sexual+romantic, or metaphorical. He denies having in the exes in the same book where he discusses them, and claims that love is the pupa for hate.

You can choose to interpret this multiple ways. To me it reads most strongly as "he's been in love but sucks at maintaining a relationship because he's an asshole, and he's got sour grapes about it"; but you could read it as "he wants love but his relationships fall apart because he can't feel it and he doesn't examine why" or "the relationships were based on something other than romantic love" and not technically be wrong based on the evidence we have. What we know for sure: he's had multiple relationships; he misses them; he tries to deny they happened; he claims love's dumb.

Genuine attachment to his tools! Bill claims torturing Ford was normal Henchmaniac hazing and he wanted him to join the gang. (Dubious evidence of emotional attachment.) He goes on a raging bender when Ford refuses to join him and escapes before Bill can torture him into joining. (Stronger evidence of emotional attachment.) In Weirdmageddon, seconds after Ford tried to murder Bill, he asks Ford to join him and then turns him into a statue he carries around everywhere when Ford refuses—and this is BEFORE he discovers Ford might still have a practical use for him.

On TINAWDC, he has an exchange that boils down to "Ford was just a tool?" "You say that like it's a bad thing!" "So you never cared about him?" "I didn't say that." He goes on to refer to Ford as his pet and henchman. Demeaning—but, people do feel positively toward their pets.

(It may be worth noting he also calls Teeth the Henchmaniacs' pet. Maybe this is a consistent element to how Bill relates to sentient people.)

There's evidence in TBOB that he felt similarly about his first human henchman, the shaman—at minimum, he's very bitter when the shaman turns on him and he says he's gonna find a "new best friend."

Summary: There's evidence that Bill develops facets of positive attachments to the people around him; but we don't have any evidence that any of these attachments ever added up to a positive & healthy relationship. In all the relationships we see in depth, the toxic aspects outweighed the positive ones.

Summary of the summary: Bill has the capacity for healthy relationships but is too big a douchebag to utilize it.

billford animatic i made to the song 'confrontation'! ^^