Concrete Jungle by Bad Omens gives me serious Merc vibes honestly o:

oh, 100%. I might end up making a merc playlist fr but this part

is really spot on

i love delilah i love her name so much its giving "Hey there, delilah what's it like in New York city? I'm a thousand miles away but girl, tonight you look so pretty yes, you do"

I've had this song stuck in my head since u sent the ask 😭

I'm with the other Anon, I'll most likely drop some of the ROs and focus on the dog! Especially cus my LI is Jax. Why stay with him when I have my beautiful, trusting, and wonderful dog♥️

trusting 😭 why is jax catching strays left and right, his reaction was in character

The absolute drop-off in any asks that aren't related to Future Dog are just killing me

I want to put that dog in a sidecar on D's motorcycle and toodle around town showing it off. Orla's gonna be furious at the sudden lack of concentration. The dog is the MC now

everyone heard dog and abandoned their ROs lmaooo I can't say I'm too surprised that people take a liking to someone that will love merc unconditionally from the start 😌

that idea is hilarious bc dante/delilah would be down to play chauffeur to the mercs dog. just name the time and place and they'll be there

What color will be the doberman? Are you going to the standard black & rust? Or are we getting red & rust, fawn, blue, white albino or black melanistic?

It would be cute if she was fawn colored like a little murder princess

I was planning black and rust because it looks most... threatening to me haha. she won't be a bad dog to merc but I associate that most with danger considering the breed she will be :) I do think fawn is very pretty but can't say I've ever seen one irl!

D’s reaction to that last question is quite interesting. They’ve known Merc the least amount of time (Supposedly. Maybe they have a hidden shared past like last demo iirc). Their reaction was more personal than Orla who just took their hypothetical death as a “great, now I have to find a new one”. I have to wonder if it’s Merc’s sorta infamous reputation that has shaped their perception or something more involved for D’s reaction.

On another note I find Orla’s detachment to Merc fascinating. Similar to another anon question she’s known Jax and D for less time and I understand roles and all that but it doesn’t make sense for the distance. Jax is an employee too. D is something. Yet they seem to hold much more value to her. Is it just because of their roles? Or does she just think Merc is a bad/unimportant person?

Talking about D would probably be spoilers but Jax, would her reaction to his death be more personal than “now I have to get another body guard/business partner”?

orla doesn't think the merc is unimportant or bad, she just recognizes them for what they currently are. which is a mercenary. they do have a special ability orla has come to rely on on jobs she sends them off to, but she knows if things ended in the death of the merc, she could get a different mercenary to do similar work.

their history is complicated and will be touched on, but it also means that orla can't afford to grow too attached or to put more stake on the mercs life than she does right now. in an ideal world, orla could trust the merc to stay by her side as an asset the same way jax is, but she's not delusional enough to believe that.

the merc has the more dangerous life out of all the characters you named. jax is protected by the gang and respect he wields as part of the mirage and the club. there's no fear that he can end up dead in a ditch like the merc could and leave orla without her right hand man.

if that happened, however, she'd be shaken by it. she trusts him with her business, and he is seen as her stand-in by everyone. if someone were to get to him, she has to fear that someone could come for her as well.

dante/delilah is a different matter entirely. their relationship appears physical as of now but orla has a different fondness for her dancers due to her own history and therefore would be more rattled if something happens to them because she knows they're not like the merc. able to defend themself against people coming for their head.

she trusts the merc to do what must be done and values their abilities but knows that if the merc's life is on the line, the merc could come out on top. if she's proven false in that belief, she'll ofc mourn the loss of what the merc could do and the way they were but as of right now, it wouldn't stop her from continuing on to follow her own agenda.

The ethnicity (or the real world equivalent ethnicity, rather) ask makes me wonder about Vapolis. Of course the city shows a cosmopolitan nature, but now I wonder more or less where the city would be ubicated, roughly, if it was part of the real world. And what would be the real world ethnicities that woud be more populous there?

Now, I wasn't really thinking about my merc ethnicity at all beyond physical appearance (that is, mostly colouring), but it seems interesting to give it more thought. I do assume you would want to make the whole thing free for the reader to decide, making any potential ethnic background available, in a similar way as you do with gender. Yet, I do enjoy making MC's that fit the world as much as possible. And playing as a different ethnicity than my own (I'm Latino, technically mestizo, I guess, but closer to white than anything) can be fun and enlightening. Or so I learned when I played another IF (Merry Crisis, I think it's the title) where you have to be Singaporean. It's always an interesting thought process to have, since you come to realize some cultural differences and similarities between your own culture and others.

Of course, this IF is purposely nebulous on this matter, as most IFs tend to be (to allow the player to make themselves as much as possible).

I'm wondering more from a slight ethnographic curiosity than anything. But also probably would help me with deciding a name for my merc, since I do enjoy making the entomologies of my MCs names make as much sense as possible in the world's they inhabit. Here I understand I have a lot of freedom in that regard, yet, freedom can be a curse since it means an infinity of choices with not clear boundaries other than taste and aesthetic compatibilities.

I wish I had a grand answer to this or specific location in mind, but to be honest I was mostly inspired by cities I've been to or want to visit.

especially Tokyo and Berlin play a big inspiration in how the city looks and should feel like, but I can't imagine vapolis being either in Japan or Germany or around that area. I want the city to feel independent to anything we have in terms of actual cities even if I draw inspiration from it and, seeing as, especially Berlin, is known to be a city that's full of cultures meeting and people from all over the world finding a home here, even if only for a little while, I want Vapolis to feel similar.

there's no ethnicity that's the most wildly spread in vapolis and it's a big mix of cultures and people and traditions clashing to make new ones.

I know that's not what you're looking for in terms of answer to decide for your own merc, but I really want everyone to feel free in choosing the name or ethnicity or anything else about the merc. they're your character now, and as we have seen from the ROs and side characters, the names are all a wild mix of old and new and strange :)

dante dante dante we are sleeping on his twin sister delilah theres is js something about that girl (obv to each their own, this is a joke ! 😝)

imagine the scenes if dante and delilah would be twins fr... the chaos that would cause haha

mestizo…………. HISPANIC/LATINO ECHO… IS REAL ????? (/pos this is coming from someone who is mestizo lol nice to see representation once in a while…) do you have a specific latam country in mind regarding echo?

they would be from mexico if the characters existed in our world! <3

the way I exclaimed at the ask about what ethnic groups the ROs would be a part of in the real world and saw royal would be a serb, it made me extremely happy - considering I am one (⁠◕⁠દ⁠◕⁠)

I'm half serb as well! so I just had to make one of them serb too lmao glad u liked that <3

very quick placeholder playlist cover for my @vapolis Remember, You Will Die MC 👍

Introducing my other child from another pretty cool IF, Remember you will die, written by @vapolis! :D

If the merc just died randomly out of nowhere, how would everyone react? I assume at this stage, nobody would really care…? Which ROs would have a visible change to themselves and who just wouldn’t care?

the ROs not being thrilled with the merc right now or appearing more annoyed than ever when interacting with them doesn't exactly mean they don't care. there's a big difference between being fed up with someone and indifferent to them and none of them are the latter when it comes to the merc. :)

most torn up about it would be royal, bc of the way things ended last chapter and because there was so much still to talk about, but echo wouldn't be too far behind.

echo is not exactly fond of the merc, but it's a close thing considering their history. they would mourn them in their own quiet way and never admit to doing so.

orla would be most inconvenienced by it but also... confused. she puts a lot of trust in the mercs abilities, and them dying hasn't even crossed her mind in a very long time. she'd take the time to mourn their loss as a nuisance and valuable asset.

jax expects the merc to go out with a bang, so a sudden death would throw him quite a bit and there'd be a sense of wrongness to him around anyone that tries to replace the merc.

dante/delilah wouldn't accept it as strange as that sounds. the merc isn't meant to suddenly stop living. they couldn't fanthom them living one second, and ceasing to do so the next.

High key feel like, if the merc were an RO, they would quickly skyrocket to the top of the popularity poll. Like, imagine instead our MC is some rando coming to the city looking for a better life (ala cyberpunk Night City style) and they run into this rabid dog merc. A rabid dog merc who is very damaged, secretly touch starved and EXTREMELY lonely, in need of saving from themself, etc etc. Perfect combo for a fan favorite romance!!! (this is all said in good jest btw, i love the story how it is now, please don't take this too seriously-)

yeah, I agree. I think someone like the merc as a RO would be super popular, especially if the mc is a little more reserved. people looove insane little ROs that pull their mcs out of their routines/shells

Oooo I also have a dog,aaand she is a doberman pinscher, a miniature, but she is FERAAL, her name is Judith, and she bites everyone that is not me, she is a little devil, but with me she is a sweet angel

she sounds like the kind of dog merc will get haha I love her name!!

Hello sawry if this has been asked before… but are there any real world analogs for the RO’s ethnicities?

hello! that hasn't been asked before as far as I can tell, but here are their ethnicities/ethnic groups they would be part of if vapolis existed in our world :)

dante/delilah: korean

echo: mestizo

jax: khmer

orla: akan

royal: serb

I read that ask about the merc "feeling" more like someone ngc or more like a bi man or or masc nb person or whatever they said, idk, but i feel like

I go into most IF spaces and they feel almost near Wholey created for or they cater towards women or , idk, fem nb people, bc thats what the readership is. i dont want to continue The Conversation, but i like that rywd genuinely feels genderless to me, like the MC could be literally anyone.

I dont think the merc come across one way or the other, they just Feel like theyre the merc yknow

yeah, exactly that's what I want. the merc can be anyone and has been anyone and they continue to be whoever they need to be, yk?

obviously, everyone chooses the gender of their merc on their own but the bodies they inhabit aren't changed by it and that's also partly why the merc can feel like anyone, if that makes sense? at least to me it does.

I'm glad that you think that way! but I do agree that sometimes I too feel like IFs are made with a specific target audience in mind or pre-made mc which isn't bad per se but it does feel a little limiting at times.