captain of the SS raz/lili/dogen

can you believe i've been drawing these characters since 2021 and this is the first time i've actually made proper refs

RELATEDLY i'm doing artfight this year! or trying my best to anyway! come hit me up (and if you're taking part too, drop your link in the comments!)

i'm gonna be thirty. what the hell.....

Sorry in advance this is a long one but after looking at the post for the delugionalist tattoo and reading the fan short story I had some questions.

I want to know what your opinion on Dion? Because I noticed that he tends to get more hate from some of the fans because he was a little bit of an ass. But for me he is just a brother that was scared that his brother was gone. Especially when some of the dialogue that was deleted showed that he does love Raz. So I was just wondering.

How Dion and Raz interact in your the future agents, especially since Raz was kidnapped by the delugionists. And do they what happen or is Raz keeping it a secret from them so that they don’t get put into this mess. And if the do figure it out how would they react to it?

With the youngest brother queepie, just a something I wanted to ask, is queepie going to doing some illegal like looking into a certain organization that may or may be the delugionalist. Just curious because it’s says that he’s not angry about it but there is something there that is worrying?

And on a lighter note, from your future agents au what is your favorite storyline that you or others have done

never apologise for sending long asks! especially ones that invite me to ramble (my favourite thing). short essay on Dion up first, answering the parts about au stuff under the cut

i really like Dion and i think he’s a great character, in part because he’s kind of an ass. because, y’know – the central conceit of Psychonauts is that Raz was so afraid his father was going to disown him (or worse) for being a psychic that he ran away from home to follow his dream. and PN2 has to build on that starting point, and show that actually, yeah, some messed-up things have happened to this family – while also requiring you to understand that they still all care deeply about one another, because otherwise the emotional beats in the second half of the game don’t land.

Raz reunites with his family in PN2, and his dad is super loving and chill, and his mum is teasing but happy to have him back. but Dion and Frazie both react with much more hostility, and that’s what sells the tension in the family dynamic, the pressure that they’re all under. because they’ve all been raised with these strict rules – that psychics are the enemy, that they can’t trust outsiders, no matter what.

Raz chafed under those rules so much that he ran away. but Dion and Frazie have both internalised them, and are even now trying to enforce them, trying to claw back some semblance of normalcy in their lives. and that’s an intensely believable way for them both to act, both as teenagers and as older siblings. we see it especially keenly in Frazie’s dialogue, where she accuses Raz that he’s ashamed of being an Aquato – then shuts him down when he brings up the whole psychic thing, chiding him that she can’t play those “silly brain games” any more now that they’re older. she’s trying to police his behaviour in their parents’ stead – never mind that their actual parents have already done an abrupt one-eighty on the subject. i think this is all great writing! it’s an understandable way for someone to act in her situation, it makes her (and her dynamic with Raz) feel very real, and it also underwrites the greater tension in the family that the first game touched on.

with Dion, it’s the same. everything he’s mad at Raz for is the stuff that he’s been taught to believe was important growing up – that family need to stick together, that they have to keep secrets to keep each other safe, that something bad will happen if they don’t. he’s kind of an asshole in his dialogue, but it’s not for no reason. his whole world has just been turned upside-down, he’s freaked out about it, and he’s clinging to these rules he was brought up believing in because it’s the only way he can try and regain some control in his life. he denies obvious facts, like Augustus being psychic (“it’s a phase!”), because right now he’s not thinking or acting rationally – he’s hurt and upset, and he’s lashing out in response. he acts like he doesn't care, but he actually cares a lot. (and we can see from his reactions the moments when he knows he’s gone too far, that he regrets telling Raz they'd be better off without him as soon as he says it.)

i think if Dion and Frazie had both been sweet and welcoming to Raz when he got home, it would completely gutted the inciting incident from PN1. the fact that we get to see how Raz’s siblings have also been struggling under the tension in their family, how it’s shaped them both in different ways, is what makes it feel real. without that, none of Raz’s hang-ups in PN1 are at all believable, and that subsequently makes the reveals of PN2 also feel completely emotionally hollow. if you want to sell that these characters are stressed out and under pressure, you have to make them make rash decisions and lash out at each other sometimes! and that’s what makes Frazie and Dion both feel like characters with actual depth and complexity, instead of one-dimensional cut-outs. so: yeah, i really like Dion, i think he’s great, and i wrote two entire fics from his PoV that are probably a more eloquent encapsulation of my thoughts on him than this whole rambling essay is, hahaha.