the wanderer and furina story was beautiful!! i loved the little foreshadowing to dancing a waltz alone, which i read was furina dancing at the stage as the hydro archon all alone—but she’s not alone because scaramouche is there as well.

it was genius to have scaramouche see the funeral of furina and furina the funeral of scaramouche. i’m not sure if this is reading too much but the front part of the story hints at neuvilette controlling the rain, and the fact that it rained at the end… does it allude to how neuvilette was mourning for the death of what furina was (which was her act and the furina that he grew to know) but in the midst of people mourning the loss furina is freed and found a partner who understands her turmoil and they sort of relish in that fact they aren’t alone??? either way, i loved it and i would love more author’s commentary!

i don’t think this is particularly ooc too. — @apologems

for people who missed the context it is here

ehe (venti voice) thank you!!!!! wahhh this is such a sweet note 🥺 also i'm so glad you picked up on all the things i added in by chance and intentionally FDSKFJKDSJF it's good to hear they were expressed clearly enough!!

tbh both the waltz and the rain were kinda spontaneous BUT im very happy they both had their intended effects. i was thinking about that exact scene when writing the waltz line—it's such a good cutscene from the archon quest i had to refer to it. lowkey was also thinking about coppelia and coppelius, especially since they're a pair of dancers, based off a play about an almost human mechanical doll and the creator who fell in love with her... yeah. it's not 1:1 but the pieces are there. also yeah her and scara! it worked nicely as his intro, but I also wanted to show furina as someone who's suddenly alone, but slowly trying to live for herself.. in an empty ballroom there's nobody for whom to put on an act, and now she can dance only if she feels like it. she can also teach scara how to formal dance! and maybe his puppet body can finally control its own strings </3 also im sure she's been to some kind of fancy ballroom party before with neuvillette and maybe this just reminds her of the artificial foreignness that's estranged them now. oh furina my dear actress on the stage

i was so close to cutting out the rain at the end but i was like nooooooo i need the weather symbolism (incredible archetype btw i love weather), and furiously tried to figure out a good ending sentence. you basically got all my thoughts LOL i wanted people to make the connection between rain as rebirth and the washing away of old sins, but also like. the sky is crying. it is dreary and miserable and they're soaked to the bone but the last string connecting their present to their past has finally been dissolved, and now... maybe they're free to move on to sunnier days.. etc,,, i didn't think too much about neuvillette's role in this but what you said 100% works <3 im still unsure what he thinks of furina tbh so i didn't really elaborate DSKFJKSDJ. last thought about the rain: they both have a thing about crying, but the only thing wet during that scene was the rain—i guess i was trying to show like, neither furina nor scara think that this death is a bad thing, or maybe all the tears they could've shed already dried up. it's only other people who mourn for their pasts.

also i forgot but the fire was supposed to be a lowkey callback to when scara burned the house down when his unnamed child died. the entire theme i was kinda going for was like. a farewell to your past; no matter what happened before, maybe you can finally put it down, and leave it behind, live today unrestrained by yesterday's pain, etc.

if i was an animator this would've gone so much better because the scenes were so clear cut in my head. ideally the flow is like this: furina says she can see kabukimono. wanderer's face whitens in a flash, until he's the color of a sheet of paper and it's actually scary to look at. he recovers, says the line about his and furina's funeral. he steps closer to her and turns so that they're directly facing each other, faces like two feet apart. it cuts to a closeup of their faces, panning from furina's, neutral/apprehensive, to wanderer's, eyebrows furrowed, face set (entirely self centered anger that this, of all things, is fate's last laugh at him). and idk the light changes and makes his eyes glassier and more reflective, and furina sees her old self—the camera gets sucked into her reflection (like you're diving into the void) as her face warps in a terrible twisted way, maybe some blood idk; the camera zooms back out, furina breathes heavily, looking disturbed and a bit sick. wanderer is slightly off to the side and his face is blurred (the focus is on furina's slightly horrified face) but he's watching her closely and carefully, but without judgement. wanderer holds out his hand, and furina takes it, and immediately the hiss of the fire starts. its like one of those gigantic funeral pyres, wild and leaping and intense, and she watches the pile of kabukimono doll get smaller and smaller. somewhere in the middle a blackened chunk of something gets spit out (his heart), lands at their feet. the most important part is that after the fire burns itself out, the rain starts immediately. sudden downpour, very heavy etc. the viewer should feel a wave of Closure and Relief after the intensity of the burning. a slow waltz starts playing in the background, low, smooth, and very quiet. they just stand there, and the camera zooms out until they're just two dark blue/black smears against a blurry gray backdrop. end scene

also about the characterization: that's good I always wonder whether I'm leaning too much into my own writing voice instead of sticking closer to the character's canonical language register and mannerisms haha