How to get me to draw: step 1 release a hair down Arisa card

It happened last year it happened this year what do you want me to Do huh?? Pretty long hair is my weakness ... Anyway I'm late but I wanted to try cool lighting so here we are

Happy birthday best girl ily

I need to get back to my YukiRin wip it is just sitting there

whether you've changed or not, you're still wonderful

i didn’t touch this for 7 months and then all of a sudden

Yeah ok screw it more stuff from a while ago. Specifically when df Touko was revealed. Feat. YukiRin cuddle and Sayo in a whole lot of pain she does not deserve

this happened on a whim

nonchan covering a christmas song got me in the mood and well. we certainly do not have white afternoons in the middle of summer (help) but popipa my beloved! merry christmas/happy holidays i messed up the lyrics just pretend i didn't. it's too late for this

anyway back to arisaposting before i become convinced all my takes are wrong and disappear again

look i had character development on the brain and the baby arisa event. i have more thoughts on it actually

it may be about arisa’s fight with her grandma when she was little but when she makes that big apology it is about So Much more than just that fight. it’s about everything else she’s done. not going to school. simply being the person she was, the person she hated so much she never wanted the world to see it

comparing this event and double rainbow … the difference in self-acceptance … back then she screwed up and pushed everyone away. she wanted to give up on herself before she could be given up on because she saw her mistakes as a reflection of who she was and couldn’t bring herself to reach out and apologise because how could she ever make up for being so intrinsically horrible. popipa would be better off without her. when she did apologise she had to plan it out and make sure the notes she took for rimi were thorough and complete and everything had to be perfect if she could ever hope to earn forgiveness

obviously what she’s apologising for this time is much less immediate but when she finally remembers the fight she just dashes straight home to her grandma and lets out all the guilt and shame she’s held inside all this time because she can face it now. she knows her mistakes don’t define her and she doesn’t need to go above and beyond to atone. she can just be honest and that’s enough. the “maybe it’s too late but i wanted to say it properly. i’m sorry and thank you” ughhh there are so many things she hasn’t been able to say and even now she only talks about the fight because bandori’s writing is infuriating (affectionate), which kinda adds to the bittersweetness of Still not being able to put everything into words. but maybe that’s all that’s needed! her grandma is just thankful she’s able to have fun with her friends now and if arisa tells her about all the fun things she does that’s enough to make grandma happy and. it’s ok for her to be flawed and still be happy and loved!! i’m fine

WAIT. i was gonna follow up the briar road post with another arisa post because that’s just what i do now i guess but i suddenly remembered this from yukina’s umbrella 4* special episode … ouch. ouch this reads so differently with hindsight

Exhibit A of yukina having a very deep understanding of people and their struggles but just. flashback reel of her doing the complete opposite of coexisting with her problems. she attained the resolve to in a song unfinished but who says having resolve is enough or that it’ll translate into action? numerous anime protags boo at me. oh god she is so valid. she sees things so clearly and yet

also once i tried to compare yukina to hamlet and uh that may sound very odd but no really. the duty vs desire and saying they have the resolve to do something and not being able to do it while also having banger takes on humanity but somehow managing to make a colossal mess and i Know i sound insane but bs3 gives me the same feeling the entirety of hamlet gave me as a high schooler. like watching a train run itself off a cliff and Oh God Stop Making Bad Decisions Please We All Know How This Will End

… i’m so sorry i need to be physically restrained

edit: my dash calling me out

HI BRIAR ROAD EVENT. i did want yukirin but it doesn’t matter the story gave me them anyway along with the other thing i wanted which was a callback to prelude replay. watch me lose my mind over an event that’s just about roselia’s live not meeting their own stupidly high standards (on the surface anyway they Are pros and there are stakes but we will see how that plays out)

loving all the references to previous events lately. the swear night & day event and umbrella in the autumn rain (do not talk to me about that yukisayo scene i Will become incoherent) and now sayorin and blossoming in largo and not directly mentioned but yukina and neo-aspect … that hurt me so much but she looks like an angry cat in her untrained very much worth it

RINKO. her ability to face her weaknesses and failures head-on and her response to failure directly contrasted with yukina’s. yukina’s response is immediately “something wrong = must solve problem as rationally as possible” which only leads to making unreasonable demands of everyone around her (sound familiar … hahaha …) but whenever she does this she is not getting to the root of the problem at all. she doesn’t want to be having a problem! whereas rinko will dwell on her disappointment and frustration and Cannot stop even if she tries which can be a bad thing and it was for her too but somewhere along the way she turned it into a strength. if she can’t avoid it she has to face it. and facing it has made her stronger than anyone else. she might think she’s weak for not being good at getting over her problems but can those who are look at themselves as she does and not want to run away?

yukina helped her in prelude replay and now it’s rinko’s competition piece from back then that reminds yukina of what she and the others should be doing. prelude replay replay. and yukina. she’s the one who points out they were trapped. too caught up in recreating the success of their first show and now they have to face their regret. “only pursuing ideals is not growth” oh boy do i have things to say about that. i wrote this about her a while ago (from my google doc collection of Assorted Character Thoughts)

Her being extremely future-oriented yet seeing the past through an idealistic lens that propels her forward in all the wrong ways. Her father’s dream. Roselia’s sound pre-BS2 before they grew closer. The way LOUDER used to be before they stopped performing it. Vague ideas forming the basis of solutions that don’t work because they’re really just warped impressions. Trying to fix a problem by holding up some isolated aspect of the past as a standard is a recipe for disaster

will add that she always thinks about what she can do now rather than what she should’ve done in the past but maybe it’s precisely because she knows how unchangeable and unreachable the past is that she idealises parts of it. also thinking about how her arc up to fwf was more (?) focused on reconnecting positively with music and herself and now she’s learning to sit with the messy negative stuff by actually reflecting honestly on the past instead of pushing forward trying to banish problems without processing them

the sayorin is very good i’ve just used up all my brain space fixating on this one dumbass so all i have to say is they compare each other to the moon and sayo calls rinko beautiful. in conclusion my roselia faves are all incredibly gay for each other and i’m loving it

agh ok i’m indecisive but doing this too

• best girl: arisa
• fave supporting character: asuka
• least fave girl: uhh idk anymore but that’s a good thing!
• least fave supporting character: they are all just sitting there um
• girl(s) you have the most 4*s of: arisa (8) i sold my soul for her lims
• fave original(s): star beat, natsu ni tojikomete, hello wink, neo-aspect, ringing bloom, the circle of butterflies, fly with the night
• least fave original(s): i’m gonna say black shout solely bc of that time i watched a bunch of roselia lives in a row and got very tired of it. there are def songs i like less but i don’t listen to them enough to have strong feelings
• fave cover(s): taiga yo tomo ni naite kure, sousei no aquarion
• least fave cover(s): happy synthesizer beatmap from hell
• date joined: april 13th 2018

using yukina’s bday as an excuse to release probably nonsensical thoughts about bs3 again because i have a problem

so y’know how garupa kinda skirts around dealing with difficult/complex situations involving side characters like family members. in the beginning it felt like the writers might’ve planned to go about it differently with stuff like aglow bs1 and introducing hagu’s home situation and of course yukina’s father in roselia bs1 but then retconned/downplayed the “her family don’t talk about music anymore” in a song unfinished and thereafter barely touched on whatever Bad Things happened in the past. Including in bs3 where it would’ve been very appropriate to do so since it is about roselia going pro and yukina having reservations about it. but THE THING IS. it’s maybe precisely because of what Isn’t said that bs3 makes me absolutely insane

yukina is a future-oriented character who is ironically haunted by her past issues coming back to bite her. it happens in bs2 of course but bs3 somehow reads like a parallel to her pre-bs1 spiral into obsession as if it’s sort of indirectly addressing what was never shown, in a way that says This Way of Handling Things Is Very Very Her. she starts out happy and fulfilled just like she was as a child. she’s having fun with music and no longer using it as a means to an end. but then things change and suddenly everyone else has a reason to want to go pro and she alone doesn’t and she falls back into forcing other people’s goals on herself to the point she seems to want what they want more than them (i’m not saying she didn’t want to go to fwf but it wasn’t out of her own ambition y’know … it giving her a purpose seemed more important) and doing what she thinks she has to do instead of listening to her heart and it’s like … this is what happened before just less extreme

the fact that we See It Happen unlike in bs1 when she was already deep in the hole she dug herself into. we see it. the moment she commits to this new goal, her new everything, because god this girl does not know what half-hearted devotion means. the quiet quiet resignation as she agrees to sing a song she said roselia would never perform again. the lies the persuasion the betraying her values and justifying her own actions to herself as well as the others the rash decisions without consulting the others the desperation hidden under the logic as she keeps singing and singing and it’s not working and she knows it but can’t stop. no no yukina no not again. don’t do this again. she does it again. she has roselia to snap her out of it but. oh to be the same person you always were in changed circumstances and you’ve grown so much and yet. you can’t escape the curse of being you. she is so real for this

not addressing stuff explicitly Could be a device that reflects yukina’s avoidance of her feelings. in bs2 we’re not privy to her thoughts at all until she breaks. in bs3 she thinks about the future like it’s a logic puzzle so that’s all we get but yeahhh her actions say otherwise. she’s scared of what will happen to roselia if they go pro but rationalises the living hell out of it, downplays her concerns and decides they’re doing it anyway. everyone else wants to and it’s the best path for them! her father gets one passing mention as if she’s over what the industry did just because she talked to one (1) pro musician in the zeal of proud event. she is not over it. “I thought that perhaps the fulfilling time we spend on our music would end,” she admits later. does that sound like someone who’s over a very similar fulfilling time having ended before. (tweaked the translation because it left out the 終わってしまう which is the most important part.) then ako and rinko reassuring her that change isn’t so scary and doesn’t mean the end and no one ever mentions the past but ugh it’s there

also LOUDER as a symbol of the past and unfulfillment and incompleteness and the whole birdcage thing associated with it … goddamn she really did leave that baggage behind only to find herself trapped again before concluding that it’s not that she won’t sing it anymore, it’s that she can’t. like it’s something beyond her control

(isn’t it ironic that the Sprechchor mv shows her bandmates trapped when she’s the one who actually is. almost like she feels responsible for holding them back with her uncertainty and thinks the entire burden of freeing them rests on her—)

yukina isn’t bad at emotions, quite the contrary especially in events where she plays support, but she just does not want to deal with her own feelings when they act up. she’d rather things be controlled and orderly! which is not how emotions work! people think she’s just an ass because outwardly she doesn’t appear to be struggling until the rationalising and problem-solving and bashing her head against a wall don’t work and she’s forced to face her feelings and there’s nothing more threatening to her sense of control than oh god Feelings

the senkou mv as a representation of that … her antagonist self depicted as a violent and unpredictable threat that literally puts her system on red alert but who is also made of light and y’know, that pure wide-eyed child at her very core who reminds her of her love and passion for music … her entire arc about rediscovering that love, and facing her feelings both good and bad being the key to facing music. and bs3 has her acknowledge that she needs to talk stuff out Before she ends up doing all sorts of reckless and confusing things as a band-aid solution yet again

the way she is such an unstoppable force and yet. she’s just a girl who sings. sayo accused her of having no vision beyond fwf all the way back in bs1 and … she really didn’t. she wants to reach the heights of music which is a really abstract unworldly concept and music when it’s connected to her love in its purest form is what matters to her, not fame or commercial success, and yet she keeps sabotaging her truth and and

(really interesting contrast with rui who thought her love meant nothing without talent and recognition while yukina thought she had no right to sing with impure feelings despite being talented and recognised)

anyway thoughts eating my brain. funny how roselia bs3 is the one where yukina is “too nice” and the only bs3 where no one ends up in tears but the things it does to me … the glass shattering in the pv was way too dramatic for the tone of the story but maybe that was the point

oh but of course arisa is getting an essay too. yukina’s writing is really fun to chew over but arisa is my girl y’know. was gonna do art but i got distracted—

can we talk about the way arisa presents herself. how she finds it easier to be honest with people she’s Not as close to because then she’s just being polite and considerate out of social obligation, not because that side of her is real! but it is real and it’s so much easier to express under the guise of fakeness. or with a certain degree of fakeness. then with popipa she plays up the tsun act as a defence mechanism because oh god she wants closeness so much but it terrifies her to be so open and so seen and she thinks she doesn’t deserve it and it’s easier to act like she doesn’t care. things happen when people get close. you’ll let your guard down and be hurt, or you’ll expose the darkest ugliest parts of yourself you’ve tried to compensate for with your High-Achieving Good Girl behaviour your whole life

and yet. people do see her in spite of everything. yeah she’s bad at lying and gets flustered easily and it’s a funny bit but it’s not only that. all the social correctness and denials and people still know who she is because she is many things and all of them are her, even when she tries to hide. her honest feelings shine through in her actions more than her words but at the same time the pretences are as much a part of her as the rest. the idea of your true self being not so clear-cut, that some of the pretending is pretending and some of it is real, and then there are the parts that are real but you exaggerate them to the point it becomes an act … rather than having this “wall” that people have to break down, it’s just a big confused soup of trying to figure out how to interact with the world with the resources you have and it’s what people do constantly and it’s Hard. yeah arisa is cynical but she’s not that cynical. she’s genuinely eager to please but not that eager. she’s so afraid of being not enough and then she’s too much and who are you really, after trying so hard to make yourself bigger and smaller and nothing ever seems to fit just right? you’re still you, whoever that is. and maybe defining it isn’t that important but dear lord is it frustrating when you can’t express yourself the way you want

that one bit from a rhythmic beat: fireworks festival where she goes

... I wonder if we'd have all been together if I hadn't said anything about this spot …

(Or maybe ... if I’d just told them about it normally instead of playing it up as a secret, they would all be here …)

(I was just trying to make them happy ... What's gotten into me ...?)

nitpicking in an attempt to make a point but again the translation of the second line (それか……この場所のこともったいぶらずに、 普通に教えてれば、みんな集まって来られたのか…… -> “Or maybe... if I hadn't been so secretive in the first place, they would all be here…”) seems to leave a bit out so i changed it but i’m not sure about the connotations of もったいぶる so if i’m wrong come after me. i just … her trying to share something important, overshooting and it turning out wrong and why can’t she just do it like a normal person y’know. of course she’s gained a whole lot of confidence now but early arisa just hits different. i think this event is very important. so is hectic happy valentine’s. and double rainbow. and sparkle summer dive. and how to spend a special day. god she makes me feel attacked

also on the subject of side characters not being fleshed out from the yukina post, in arisa’s case it makes sense if the nonexistence of her parents is just Avoidance of Death Mention but y’know what. as much as i enjoy angst there’s something nice about characters just being the way they are and that being ok without focusing on what may or may not have happened to them. yeah i do hc that arisa’s parents are dead and i think about abandonment issues and the importance she places on politeness and academic ability being something she was taught as a kid but still. the lack of all that in canon gives it this kinda … acceptance and non-judgement from the narrative? does that make sense. it’s like, you’re dropped into this story about friendship and love and no matter what sort of life you’ve had, what happened or didn’t happen, what you did or didn’t do, you’re here now and there are people who will accept you the way you are with open arms. you don’t need a justification for being a certain way. bandori’s narrative is generally really sympathetic towards characters’ personal struggles and it feels like the story cheers them on through it all, as the people they are in this present moment

so i mean craft egg absolutely tricked us with the summary of the baby arisa event lmao but at the same time i do think this aspect of the writing is nice in its own way

baby arisa event still good though. features the saga of her not dealing well with broken promises and being hard on herself. like … it’s a throwaway line but if she’s hard on other people breaking promises how does she judge herself for doing the same huh … ahaha … highly recommend subjecting your heart to ayasa’s voice acting in chapter 5 ugh ugh she does not miss

random sketchbook yukinas sorry for awful quality i take pics at the worst times and can’t be hecked

but this is actually a fic post. here’s a short yukiran. i think it would’ve been cool for ran to have a scene in roselia bs3 since yukina is in aglow’s bs3 and the fact that they make the complete opposite choices would’ve been a neat thing to point out. also their recent jp content has been missing what i love most about their dynamic so uh. gotta feed myself right

yes i posted it anonymously and it makes no sense that i’m putting it here but i’ve just become very self-conscious about my writing and being perceived and would rather have fics floating in an abyss than attached to a profile. it feels more like linking a google doc than Big Scary ao3 y’know. my brain is weird sorry. in fact i’ve been posting other things and stuff from earlier this year which i am now in the mood to dump here. don’t mind me

soft rinari which i let marinate in a doc for two years i’m not even joking IT’S NOT EVEN 2K WORDS. upside is there are lines i’m pretty proud of

older domestic ariyuki solely to feed the tag

and the ones from the period when i was trying to make myself like lisa more and what better way to do that than to write about her (before the roseglow summer event that rewired my brain)

this one expands on noble rose 1 with chu2 and kasumi thrown in to make it even more of a sequel/throwback to the lisa’s lyrics event. why not

and the reason for this. 9k words of morfonica lisa au/rewrite of parts of roselia and monica bs1s to explore lisa’s relationship with yukina because i cannot vibe with it in canon (rarepair-liking curse) and wanted to see how writing it would feel

so yeah! writing is fun