#tangentially.

and of course, as the spiritual predecessor to my doodles, @dooandpoo's hard launch doodles are her older sister

thank you so much! i have a lot of thoughts about this, idk how organized they’ll be, but here goes:

i’ve really been obsessed with that idea for a while, it just keeps coming back to me because like. daniel is SO proud of what he’s accomplished in season one and two. he’s fucked up all his relationships, but at least he’s a seasoned professional. this is his swan song, louis was his first big interview and now he’s his last. it’s hard, it’s terrifying, at every turn it gets weirder, but it also gets more electrifying. suddenly he’s alive again, his depression is gone, life is worth living because he gets to do what he’s good at. he’s got a repartee with louis and ‘rashid,’ which he enjoys until he doesn’t, there’s some torture involved, but he’s so in denial about everything that he just steamrollers right past that.

but then, just as quick as all that comes on, he immediately starts getting sicker, he’s in more pain, he’s having flashbacks that don’t make sense, he’s trying to puzzle out two different things at once, and he finds out that he not only got tortured, he got taken apart and put back together.

I loooooveee the trend of cae always comparing phainon to himself and pointing out how alike they are, it’s soo cute…. I’m really glad that the devs acknowledge the fact that they’re both kevins in a way - it gives me hope that they’ll do something interesting with the 2 of them. For the first screenshot I’m aware that for Stelle players the 4th option just doesn’t show up but I don’t know if the dialogue choice in the 2nd screenshot changes- I asked my friend to check but if anyone else can check it for me it’ll help a lot!

It makes me happy that the devs are playing around with it in game… there’s already so many parallels between the 2 of them I’m kind of delusional about it.

The perfect hero, the perfect vessel for divinity- it matches well with cae who was made to hold the stellaron. The way they’re both bound by fate and exist to carry out their one duty, and are reduced to that one trait by other characters. And in phainon’s case, he himself is throwing himself into and leaning heavily into his hero role to give himself a purpose - vs caelus who tries to break out of this script by forging his own identity (insistence on using his galactic baseballer name), being more than just the stellaron’s host, consistent bizarre and unpredictable/rebellious behaviour just to prove his own free will

Anyway a bunch of phainon related things I wanna yap about and record somewhere:

Ouuughg. I love his eyes soooo much. It’s perfect… so bright and blue… it’s so unique too, w the ring and yellow centre… I interpreted the ring as clock marks at first but more accurately they’re sun rays, esp with the yellow pupil- it really looks like a sun in the sky. I love it. The ring pattern is also reminiscent of kephale’s symbol- that speaks for itself. It sorta contrasts mydei’s eyes as well… phainon feels like the daytime sun while mydei gives the impression of a harsh sunset. I really like how the sun ray patterns are inverted, too- phainon has his ring that surrounds the centre while mydei seems more like sunlight radiating out from the centre. If that makes sense lol. I don’t even ship them hardcore but seeing red and blue next to each other activates my neurons in a special way (I’m insane) also I’m phaicae main but even I can admit the entire castrum kremnos map was us third wheeling their gay fucking rivalry. It’s so amazingly funny. Incredibly hilarious.

We can also talk about this right. What the fuck. Hey. Why do you. Why do. Why are you. Why would you name yourself dark swordmaster. Hello. Phainon. Do you have something to share with the class. Hey. Of all names. Why would you call yourself dark swordmaster. Mr flawless hero deliverer and saviour of humanity. I’m watching you.

Besides that the whole battle dialogue was soooo fucking cute ARHHGHGG phainon and caelus doing their silly role playing goofing around mid battle 😭😭😭it’s so adorable, phainon was the one who initiates it and caelus plays along while mydei just gets pissed in the background leading to phainon talking over him. It’s comedic gold. Beautiful. I win. Even funnier is cae and phai having the same cn va so it just sounds like he’s talking to himself… actually listening to it again caelus does sound lighter and more joyful similar to high school kevin…. maybe the real kebin was the caelus along the way… ue

His design is great I really love the combined knight/hero/prince theme… his eyes being bigger compared to other male models also gives this friendly open welcoming vibe it’s ouughhh. so cute. so youthful. I hope the horrors get to him. There’s really no better word to describe him than ouppy. The first time I saw his design the one thing that really stood out to me was the asymmetry of his shoulder guards giving a light/dark half n half look to it… it’s interesting. his arm guards/gloves also have the same inverted black/white asymmetry to it (reaching). Choker. That’s all I’ll say. Actually no sorry the choker has me in a trance. I was gaslit into it by my friend because he would NOT stop pointing out the choker. Now I can’t not pay attention to it. Anyway. The design of the choker itself is pretty unique too, I like how it’s a strap(?) instead of the typical solid band, and the sun tattoo under the strapped parts giving the impression of the sun peeking/bursting through the darkness.

Second pic: I’m insane. I used to stare at Kevin’s design for an extensive period of time and I did the same w phainon. I have their designs burnt into my retina. Apart from them literally having the same colour palette I do like how phainon’s design is mostly white vs Kevin’s black base. (One of) my fav parts of kevin’s design is the lopsided blue belt. It adds sooo much. u get me. (deranged) phainon also having a somewhat lopsided belt made me laugh a lil (a lot) when I first saw it. As a normal person does. The belt along the bottom of the coat too……. wow……. welcome back…….. those 2 are my fav design aspects on kebin it’s crazy that they brought back those 2 elements in particular. crazy. you can make an argument for the boob window being vaguely the same shape too w how phainon’s belt goes across the low v neck. I really like that element on phainon btw. lopsided belt cutting across the chest and breaking up the light colour of his neck. scratches my brain in a good way

(From the verax leo statues) it’s sooo funny. he can’t get anything right 🔥 he really gives kicked puppy in these shots.

Misc: I went back to check Acheron’s trailer - the one with kevin’s voice - the eng va for kevin there is different compared to phainon’s eng va despite the jp/cn being the same. food for thought. Maybe union strike issues?

Future predictions: he’s obviously failing the nikador trial. Like no shit atp. I hope he has a catastrophic mental crash out from it. 🙏 3.1 probably big mydei focus as he accepts the coreflame. Excited for that… I do like what we’ve seen of mydei so far despite initially not caring from his design. Phainon better be 3.4 and not a late 3.7 like ppl are recently saying or else IM the one with the catastrophic crash out. Please. I hope we meet anaxa soon… I really wanna learn more abt him. Design wise- didn’t interest me at first. My interest in him solely hinges on the fact that he’s su, lol. On the surface he seems more like a haitham type…? Win for me, I love haitham… had the same process w haitham too- I liked him initially only cuz su but he ended up growing into a surprisingly high tier fav after I got to know him… I sorta have high hopes for anaxa too, I’m sure I’ll grow to love him too lol. Either way I can’t even pull any of these people. I need to lock the fuck in for e6 phainon. Tho- if I end up liking anaxa a lot I suppose I wouldn’t mind pulling him on debut- we’ll see how he is. Tangentially related: phainaxa pleaseeee please please please talk. please. Insane that kevinsu isn’t happy in ANY world. I remember the days of kaveh possibly being a kevin from his name but turns out he’s a new character - which I’m glad for, I absolutely love the kaveh we have now and wouldn’t trade him for the world - but holy shit dude. Back on topic: I hope phainon has the most disgustingly busted game breaking meta defining kit. like come on now. You have to. I’m not accepting anything less than stupid ridiculous numbers and scaling and game altering mechanically impossible unnecessarily bloated skill descriptions and all in game content gets centered around him for 7 months like firefly. It’s the least you can do.

Add-on: I hit the picture limit. You just gotta trust me on this one.

1) In the starting of the nameless faces op - the topless phainon- yeah. I watch it frame by frame on x0.25 spd as a normal person does but anyway what I wanna talk about is when phainon gathers the gold? Ichor? To splash on himself, the wounds that appear- those are definitely wounds, the direction it appears in doesn’t even match up to the flow of the way he splashed himself, isn’t that weird- the wounds bear an uncanny resemblance to nanook- it’s honestly way too close to be a simple coincidence. Food for thought!

2) the scene of Stelle changing into phainon as she turns around means sooooooo much to me. Sooo much. So much. Admittedly sorry I’m projecting caelus in this slot because wouldn’t that be so insane.

3) the ending where Stelle is praying(?) in the same hall that started the video, where soldiers were kneeling before phainon. I dunno there’s something there. Trust me on this. At the end of the story everything will be gone? Empty? Never existed? Take phainon’s place as hero? There’s something there.