Opt In/Opt Out (Come Sail Away Specific)

[tempingainteasy]

OPT OUT: Weird Faces

Some of April's icons may involve the absence of facial features that should be there, or features that shouldn't be there, or are other wise distorted (think thatcher effect, excessive eye imagery etc). If seeing that at even a 100x100 resolution is uncomfortable for you, please let me know here and I'll post with her more normal icons when threading with you!

OPT OUT: Besties

April's best friend and coworker yourexoduslaughing is now on the ship, and may or may not jump into threads with April if the timing is right. Let us know if that's something you'd like to avoid!

OPT IN: Get Haunted!

Part of April's deal is that she is basically a living creepypasta image. Part of how she sustains herself is by taking 'cursed images' or making them cursed by being in them.

The result ranges from:
- I saw this creepy picture/video too late at night and it's been a week and I still think about it when I close my eyes
- something is wrong about this picture of me but I can't think of what it is and it's destroying my self image
- I saw this image once and screamed and don't ever send it to me again
- This face is showing up in my nightmares and I'm legit having trouble sleeping
- normally photoshops don't affect me but what the FUCK
- Okay so there definitely wasn't an extra person there when the picture was taken, I'm going to be looking over my shoulder for awhile.

- Visually, think the 'identifying an alternate' segment in the mandela catalogues or the emotions advert on blue channel.

The idea is that it lingers in a person's mind in an upsetting way, those spooky image edits you've seen that mentally scar you a little bit.

So! with that said, let me know here if you want your characters running into that with April!

EDIT It turns out writing horrible things for someone else's character completely blind is hard, so if you'd be so kind as to fill out the following:
<u><i>What scares your character?</i></u> <b>Image distortions:</b> (i.e., scribbled out eyes, grin too big, feeling like the eyes in the picture are looking at you, etc) <b>Superstitions:</b> (i.e. Particular ghosts, urban legends, unlucky images they'd be creeped out by) <b>Self-image:</b> (i.e. is there a role your character feels pressured to fill, an image they feel they can't perfect? or is there something they're afraid of becoming?) <b>Unwelcome Guests:</b> (i.e. Anyone they would be troubled to see in the background of a photo? Dead or alive? Behaving normally, or is there a way they'd emote/appear that would upset your character?) <b>HARD NO:</b> what YOU THE PLAYER don't want to see/play out a reaction to, ever.
Thanks!

How much her images affect your character and what your character does about it is entirely up to your discretion, too. You know your character's constitution best!

(Consider this a volunteer sign-up sheet for pursuing this sort of story with them, or permission to have your characters mention being unusually disturbed by a picture they saw, this isn't an immunity check!)

But my character can't see these pictures!

April:


Then this especially does not apply to you at all! Enjoy your cruise and the company of your absolutely normal cruise friend, April!

Comments

Nobunaga Oda cw: tldr: cults, untouchables, genocide, religious hatred, Demon King of 6th Heaven

[konpeito_aji]

What scares your character? Nobunaga is straight up paranoid as FUCK. He is, and has been, under CONSTANT assassination attempts since he was a child, and it got worse, not better, the more power he accumulated. He does fear the fires of hell, but more or less embraces it as a self-defense. He has PTSD, and ANY sudden jumpscare things will cause him to reflexively reach for the gun, swords, or hit the deck. Same with simply being told "get down!" even in a playful manner * (has now been told by Crichton, it means dancing, not threats, still will reflexively react first.) He is always on the offensive, expecting attacks from any/all sources, and even just watching him will make the hair on his neck stand on end and the paranoia to find the source is GREAT. That's a bit exacerbated on Serena Eterna with the ghosts etc. He doesn't fear animals/bugs/spiders EXCEPT he has a sane fear of Lovecraftian deep sea/deep space monsters because krakens, and the like are generally terrifying shit. He fears now losing his soul (wtf he hates knowing he has a soul now lmfao) and becoming a ghost, or not coming back from dying, and his greatest fear is failing his mission. - Which was on Earth to prevent the Ikko Ikki ideals of castes and austerity to spread and he wanted to ensure prosperity for Japan, so seeing WW2 defeating Japan would hurt him (especially the bombing of the wall he built by hand that lasted until then etc.)

Image distortions: EYES FOLLOWING HIM - at his most paranoid, he'd be inclined to scribble on them graffiti style purely because Fuck THAT!

Superstitions: -- THIS IS THE MOST COMPLICATED. OTOH: he spent his whole life trying to show people superstitions are stupid, and not real, OTOH: he is not going to go into full denial of reality and pretend evidence to change his mind doesn't exist just because it means re-assessing his world views. So he is in a 100% state of *flux* in CSA trying to figure out how much is real/not. He reflexively hates religion, has to re-assess "how much" of WHOM was right/wrong. His father was a monk, some of his brothers are monks / though none of them are of the same religion, and he's on great terms with a bunch of European missionaries. However, he still has some severe hatred of Taoism/Buddhism/Confucianism, and esp. wrt castes, and tries to suppress it, hating your enemy is bad. ATM: he just got through a lot of Lovecraft (thanks Natsuno Yuuki!!) and is VERY VERY scared of deep sea / deep space ELDER GODS and madness. Losing his sanity is the biggest, so in general it's "pretty easy" to just make him doubt himself, but otoh again, the more he DOES, the more his back gets pushed to a wall where he gets stubborn and "I've always been insane, I can't get worse," to the point of actually being willing to go with the flow.

Self-image: DEMON KING OF 6TH HEAVEN BWAHAHAHAHAAH -- okay so this is complicated as fuck. 1) You have to know the Buddhist Heavens -- There are 6. 6th Heaven is the top. This is how 7th heaven means going above and beyond into nirvana. Because Tao is obsessed with 7s. Moving on. 2) you have to be born (reincarnated INTO) supreme wealth/power/privilege and the TOP TIER caste. You get this way ostensibly by being SUPER SUPER DUPER pure holy and reincarnating multiple times (however many it takes!) to get better and better. So being born into this royalty status WAS believed to have been a reward for past lives. 3) EXCEPT: Nobunaga, in combination of many factors (personality, possibly having a psychotic break as a child, who can say?) went all in on tearing this apart. He believes and WILL SAY SO: that the teachings about 6th Heaven are PURELY to try to reinforce status quo, it helps NO ONE, it tries to teach the royalty to be submissive and fear losing their positions rather than HELP people and raise them out of it, and indeed, enforces the untouchable status as a means of "Don't step out of line or you'll be like THEM. He tries not to hate. He hates this. Hatred is the most demonic thing you can be. Ergo... (he's a demon KING)
- When fighting the Ikkou Ikki (a Buddhist cult led by Kennyo see below) Nobunaga called for their surrender to try to save as many lives as possible. Instead they took to calling him the Demon King of 6th Heaven, and doubled their efforts to fight back against Nobunaga. They believe in austerity, piety, A] NOT Production! B] NO: Wealth / materialism C] They believe starvation is literally good because then you will definitely be imitating Buddha and able to ascend through the heavens really fast! - One meal of plain rice and tea was enough for Buddha, be like him and ffs definitely don't eat CANDY (Nobunaga wants a Japan so prosperous anyone can have as much candy as they want) or drink alcohol HOW WASTEFUL AND BAD D] CASTES E] FATE/DESTINY F] NOT art/music/love of life G] Be only one role (ie: soldier/farmer) and don't cross the streams EVER AT ALL. Experimenting with FUN SHIT? NO! BANNED.
- || So while they started calling Nobunaga the Demon King of 6th Heaven to rile up their own side and try to convince the people "He's Buddhist Satan, be the exact opposite" Nobunaga leaned in SO HARD on this, he accidentally convinced himself he has literally turned into the Demon King, and more than just "rolling with it" he started going even harder in on being the super villain of the story of his own life (wtf he's so weird, I'm sorry) and embodying what he wanted others to do to fight back against religion.

I said superstitions was the most complicated, and it is, but bear with me, because it's a big part of where the identity thing gets fucky.

- Oichi (see below) and others (even KENNYO) have tried to save Nobunaga from idk. Himself. Ish. "Save his soul." (see above, he hates knowing that souls is actually a fucking real thing.) He LITERALLY SAYS IN CANON: the dead cultists were a blood offering to call him forth as the Demon King. VERY NORMAL SHIT. He has MIXED FEELINGS about all of this. He always does, he always WILL. It's no simple thing to resolve. Usually he leans in extra on "I know what it means, no one else has to," but VERY smart people who try to understand it, do throw him off (he expects fear & hate not understanding, but does WANT it). So then he thinks more and more about it and creates a self-questioning spiral about what it means, especially when it's not in furtherance of his goals (after all: defeating the Ikko Ikki = CHECKMARK DONE. FUCK THOSE GUYS.)

- Identity Crisis: so he leans INTO being evil, unrepentant, demonic, all things supervillain. But in reality, he's just a very chuuni WEIRDO who got emotionally stunted twice. 1) when he was 6 and was in his first war battle with his father (they were ambushed, his Mom was pissed), 2) Again at 13 when his Dad died and he had to become clan leader and fight a war against his brothers + Uncle. He spared his brother at his Mom's request and then his brother tried to kill him and overthrow him AGAIN so after that he killed his brother, and exiled his mother. Instead of breaking, he just sort of... mentally broke. And decided "Why yes, I AM a super awful monster, thank you for noticing!" But he doesn't seek farming hatred, or constant 24/7 murder/genocide, he wanted peace, he hates war. HATES war. Hates hate lol. okay. // AS BEST as he can comprehend it; there's the childhood version of himself that others called "Baka-Dono no Owari" or Fool Lord of Owari. Like village idiot, for the whole country. Yeah. This is the him that is super enthusiastic gusto (chuuni) and loves sugar and life and exploring (his dream) -- and it's been at war indefinitely since he was 13 with the Demon King of 6th Heaven in a literal battle for his soul. Maybe. MAYBE. Both sides are disinclined to be subservient, respectful, pure, polite, reasonable, austere, and anything less than "EVERYTHING TO THE MAX AND THEN SOME MORE." So all the teachings about religion and how to preserve his soul... RIP? Because he's not going to stop being himself. He can't. Also fuck that? SO HE'S JUST DAMNED. GREAT. Not really loving the fear of Hell, and how does he fight Hell again without just doing the subservient thing? HMMMM. ++ Stubbornness is a literal Demon King of 6th Heaven TRAIT. He HAS to be the most stubborn EVVVVVVVER. OF ALL TIME. OR else who/what is he?? SO NO. HE WON'T STOP BEING STUBBORN. COME FIGHT HIM GOD(S)!

He gets tripped up when people see him as the opposite of the Demon King. Cute. Konpeito. Anything fucking soft. Powerless lol. Blushy fucking moe // He HAS to be competent, USED TO have to be powerful; whatever the cost in order to GET SHIT DONE, there's a lowkey phobia that he's just a squishy lobster inside of his tough armor shell and that if you crack him open and boil him just right, he's not that deadly/poisonous at all. (he would straight up laugh if his own pictures are replaced with a lobster version of himself though) OTOH: He also fears losing his soul to becoming DEMON KING or whatever, and does not want to be a ghost. All of this is part of his trying to understand what's real/superstition/leaning too hard into the method acting oops. // Seeing him as cute/blushy/not as tough as he acts, knowing he IS scared somewhere under all the constant bravado and DEMON KING and murder-stabby-shooty-pinchy-lobster DOES make him embody that side more, for the same reason seeing him as Demon King makes him lean into it. He just shows people himself, via course of actions, and lets them define it for him, which gets weird. (I AM SURE APRIL UNDERSTANDS THAT BETTER THAN HIM LMFAO)


Unwelcome Guests: Kennyo Kosa is always in the back of Nobunaga's mind on certain Demon King & cult leader topics (which comes up a lot more than you'd think on the ship). He's supposed to be dead, but spoilers: isn't.
- April being called Sensei by Nobunaga also occasionally reminds him of Masahide Hirate his tutor who killed himself to shock sense/guilt into Nobunaga. This has an additional effect of Nobunaga just worrying he's imagining/fearing the tutor, and has had none ever since. -- disambiguation: in IkeSen Nobunaga's father died when Nobunaga was 13, before he was married to Kichou, though Masahide still killed himself out of protest/shame for Nobunaga's actions at Nobuhide's funeral.
- Oichi is his baby sister younger by about 13 years to the dot, so he practically raised her, ESPECIALLY after warring with his brother and uncle (seeing bro and/or uncle wouldn't affect him because he'd just ignore it 100%) Nobunaga exiled his mother Gozen to religious retreat so that Gozen wouldn't get caught up with the rest of the war(s) for Japan. (Seeing his Mom won't bother him much more than a "that's weird.") He MOST DOES NOT WANT Oichi on board, and can't stop thinking about her either, because others accidentally bring her up a lot, and it's the closest he has to resembling regret, especially knowing he'll never see her again (this version) and still NOT WANTING HER AROUND. IkeSen version doesn't marry Nagamasu, and Pokemon Conquest probably has the closest to how she is in his head/heart. Very cute, sweet, stereotypical princess, and he always feels powerless against her. He'd still murder her or anyone wearing her face, probably, but seeing her trapped on the ship but only in photos esp. when he can't find her FOR REAL would bother him ENDLESSLY.

HARD NO: Dolls please! Can't deal lol thanks! (Figurines/plushies are fine.)