>:3c

rymin doge. playing around with different breeds about it! rambling under the cut!

Okay, there's something I have to talk about with this scene.

My absolute favorite part about Lake's "I guess I changed too" line is how much it rejects what One-One, Mace, and the train itself keep asserting.

Everyone is telling Lake that because they are a denizen, they're meant to help passengers. It's part of how Mace mocks them before his death and part of how he tries to get into Lake's head. And it's not just Mace. It's also asserted by One-One and his insistence that Lake is exactly where they belong by being on the train, that they're so good at helping because they did help Jesse grow. Hell, if you think about it, they also helped Tulip both literally because Tulip and Lake had to swap to open the door and also emotionally because Tulip seemed to really take Lake calling her flaws out to heart. All this to say, it's been repeatedly drilled in by those surrounding Lake that not only is their purpose to help passengers but also that they're good at it. The problem here is clearly not Lake being bad at this.

Yet I feel like this one tiny line flips the script entirely. Yes, Lake did help Jesse grow. Yes, Lake did help Jesse change for the better. But this one line acknowledges that this was mutual. Lake also grew. Lake also changed for the better. Just as much as Lake helped Jesse, Jesse helped Lake. Jesse helped Lake let people in, helped them on their identity journey, showed them real human connection—the list of how much Jesse helped Lake goes on. This one line blurs the line between passenger and denizen. It rejects the very notion that denizens only exist to help passengers grow; shows that this growth can go both ways. It rejects the idea that denizens helping passengers is a defining different between the two and shows how Lake doesn't fit neatly into either category. This clip acknowledges Lake's personhood, that they're a person capable of change, a person who exists beyond helping others.

Childhood memories, tainted forever

AH sorry i thought i answered this before but its still in my inbox so i must not have?? sorry about that!!

so initially i remember having a different animal in mind, like a chicken but more chimera-esque (think falin monster form from dungeon meshi, but nowhere near as big), but tbh every design i came up with based on that just kinda grossed me out 😭 and i also figured it’d be way too easy to guess what the form was since chicken choice judy and all. (and in one of the group servers where i first discussed this, someone literally guessed it immediately😭 so i had to change it)

i settled on a cat for multiple reasons! cats can be cute, scary, or gross (hairballs… bringing dead animal gifts…) depending on the situation. i wanted ryan’s denizen form to be something where it makes sense that min can look at him and only see him as adorable and lovable, but that other denizens (like the Cat) or other humans (like amelia) might look at him and feel a visceral, uncanny disgust.

yes, the fandom joke abt catboys was part of it but more than that… well, by this point in the story ryan’s going through something alienating and horrible, and min’s just revealed some traumatic, scary shit on top of his ongoing mental spiral. when something really intense happens, i try to follow it up with something silly or hopeful to cut the tension— and i figured the readers would already be stressed enough by this point. So i figured it’d be funny and a bit of a relief to punctuate this incredibly depressing section of the story with “Surprise! We got plot-relevant catboys now!”