#AAAAA I WANNA WRITE THIS SO BAD BUT WHICH OPTIONS DO I CHOOSE

[quodekash]

I was just now thinking my thoughts in my brain, not bothering anyone, when ALL OF A SUDDEN I thought of tinngun masquerade ball au and now I’m obsessed and it’s been literally two minutes

NO BUT SERIOUSLY

WHAT IF THEYRE ALREADY ENEMIES AT THIS POINT

BUT THEN AT THE BALL THEY DONT RECOGNISE EACH OTHER, AND THEY DANCE WITH EACH OTHER, AND THEYRE BOTH LIKE 'DAMN'

AND MAYBE THEY EVEN TALK TO EACH OTHER AND THERE'S LIKE A FALLING-IN-LOVE-IN-THE-FIRST-INTERACTION KINDA SCENARIO GOING ON

AND THEY BOTH THINK THE OTHER VOICE IS VAGUELY RECOGNISABLE BUT THEYRE TOO CAUGHT UP IN THE MOMENT TO FIGURE IT OUT

ORRRR MAYBE ITS BEEN YEARS SINCE THEY LAST SAW EACH OTHER AND THATS WHY THEY DONT NOTICE THE VOICES

AND FROM THERE THEY COULD EITHER

A) PART WAYS AND NOT REALISE UNTIL THEYVE GONE THROUGH THE WHOLE ENEMIES TO FRIENDS TO LOVERS PLOTLINE THAT 'oh he was the one i was dancing with' when they have a nice little bonding session (probably by a pool)

or b) one of their masks comes off for some reason, and they realise, and then they feel betrayed/angry but with an underlying hint of 'maybe hes not so bad' and from there their relationship is never the same. and maybe they either dont interact for like months after that and they have a patpran-episode-1 moment, or they happen to see each other like all the time after that and there's still the biting hatred when theyre around others but its vaguely awkward, and when theyre alone they're kinda okay with each other (like them in canon for the first few episodes where they dont quite hate each other but gun is still certain tinn is trying to sabotage chinzhilla)

and if its the second option, there's SO MANY WAYS IT COULD GO

maybe they lean in to kiss each other but gun's mask bonks against tinn's and it doesnt quite work so tinn reaches to lift the mask up and then tinn notices gun's face and they jump away from each other

maybe tinn compliments gun's eyes (bc, let's face it, he has rly pretty eyes) and gun's like 'but you can barely see them' so he takes off his mask (maybe not exactly that cos that line sounds kinda weird but you get what i mean)

maybe gun compliments tinn's eyes (bc, let's face it, he has rly pretty eyes) and tinn's like 'but you can barely see them' so he takes off his mask (maybe not exactly that cos that line sounds kinda weird but you get what i mean)

maybe someone bumps into one of them while they're dancing and their mask isnt super secure so it comes off

THERE ARE SO MANY OPTIONS

NOT TO MENTION THE POTENTIAL FOR SOUNDWIN AND TIWPOR AND PATJORN

maybe tiw comes up to tinn while tinngun are being all sweet and tiw has this huge grin on his face and his hair is all messy and his mask isnt on (bc hint hint nudge nudge he was making out with someone (and hint hint nudge nudge that someone was por)) and gun recognises tiw and thereby recognises why he knows the other guy's voice, realises its tinn, and badabing badaboom conflict and the rest of the story

maybe chinzhilla are sticking together but slowly, one by one, they all taper off to other friends (or to makeout partners lmao), until it's just soundwin left and they kinda awkwardly stand there for a sec until win offers his hand to sound and very cheesily and dramatically asks 'can i have this dance?' and sound avoids eye contact at first and looks around the room and deflects the question, but win has this teasing smile on this face and moves his hand closer and does that thing with his eyebrows and stares directly at sound, and sound makes the mistake of looking back at him and then he rolls his eyes and takes his hand and they dance together but sound is exhausted cos hes had a lot going on recently with acting and stuff and the song changes to one of those super slow dancing ones, and sound can't really stay standing bc hes so tired so he closes his eyes and win lets him lean his head on his shoulder and they wrap their arms around each other and win sways slowly to the music while win is leaning on him (and so what if im crying while creating this image in my mind's eye) and maybe win is just so relaxed and comfortable that he rests his head on sounds and he closes his eyes (and he's not super close to falling asleep so they dont fall down altho that would be incredibly entertaining)

and even tho i dont rly want this i want a soundwin plotline in this hypothetical au so maybe someone else at the ball (probably a fan of sound's) sees them and (if its set in modern times) takes a photo of them or (if set in a period time) tells a bunch of other people and points them out (and the modern times person would also probably do that) but either way the message goes around and people are freaking out and it might like take a toll on their mental health and they might hide or have to cut off a lot of communication for safety bc sasaengs are the worst and they have a very puentalay-in-their-universe-in-ep12-esque plotline

and when the chinzhilla members slowly leave one by one, i think pat would initially leave to go get food or something and maybe he runs into jorn at the food table and they could have an argument or something

or maybe pat leaves to go get food and he runs into jorn at the food table but neither recognises each other at first and they have a moment similar to tinngun where they like low-key fall for each other without knowing what each others' faces look like

or maybe (extending from either of those two scenarios) they ask each other what people they came with, and pat sees jorn point to two guys standing in like the middle of the room dancing together (tinngun) and to two guys in the corner of the room either making out or very clearly close to making out (tiwpor), and then jorn asks who pat came with, and pat looks around and (being pat), can't find/recognise any of them until finally his eyes land on soundwin and he realises 'oh im all alone shoot dang it' and is rly close to a mental breakdown, but then jorn (who is also Bored And Alone) offers to dance with pat and at first hes caught off-guard but then he agrees and they dance and frbhghr

or maybe pat leaves to go get food and then he comes back to find everyone gone except for soundwin who are staring at each other lovingly and dancing, so he feels really lonely and runs to the bathroom and he runs into jorn (either on his way there, in the bathroom, or on his way out), and jorn comforts him or whatever

or maybe pat leaves to go to the bathroom and then he comes back to find everyone gone except for soundwin who are staring at each other lovingly and dancing, so he feels really lonely and runs to the bathroom so he goes to the food table to eat his feelings away (which feels like something he'd do), and jorn comforts him or whatever

and maybe the comforting in those last two scenarios is them dancing together and grbghrbh

and i can think of a million ways this would branch out into an actual plot but i have too many ideas to keep it as a fixed storyline and this is already so long im probably boring everyone, im so sorry but also im not because HOLY HELL MSP MASQUERADE BALL AU

[tumblunni]

also wtf who designed rune factory 4 this way THIS IS MY ONLY COMPLAINT IN AN AMAZING GAME why are all the romance routes entirely random?? even after youve reached the relationship milestones its COMPLETELY RANDOM whether the event will start every day same for every friendship event and town event and even some plot events you just have to sit there at your bed constantly skipping days for multiple years til the random number god gives you the marriage scene you did EVERYTHING to earn this marriage scene and you have nothing left to do but wait and youll never see any new events with that character until it happens, and you have a very limited amount of dates to go on while youre waiting, and they all do NOTHING except raise the relationship bar over maximum which does nothing. doesnt even increase the chance of the random event?? why even LET me increase it over maximum if it does nothing? thats just tricking me into thinking i havent unlocked the marriage event yet! when I HAVE and i just need to WAIT A BAZILLION YEARS OF RANDOM

anyway i finally got Leon’s random marriage quest and it was Awesome and So Many Tears and now im even more conflicted on who to marry gahhhhh its such a shame you cant resolve everyone’s plot unless you date them, i feel so bad dating all these people when im not able to marry them all, just cos i wanna fix their lives and make them happy but then theyre gon be sad that we didnt get married aaaa

and Leon is especially saddddd

now cos his whole plot is that he had a depressing scenario with a friend as a kid. She loved him but he saw her as just a little sister, and he jokingly promised to marry her once when they were too young to understand. And he didnt know she took it seriously until after he DIED and reincarnated as a fox monster person centuries later too late to do anything about it. And he’s crushed full of guilt that he somehow led her on, and he was never able to apologise, and he’s scared she spent her whole life waiting for him to come back. and then you get this very cool series of sidequests thatre a realistic look at translating languages, and its really motivational how leon is able to help bring knowledge of a dead language back to life and preserve the ancient culture that people thought was lost BUT THEN ENDLESS FUCKIN TRAGEDY kiel accidentally finds an old diary of leon’s friend (WHAT ARE THE ODDS) and he has frickin detailed anxiety attacks unable to even hold the damn paper cos he’s shaking so much and you go on a big treasure hunt to find all the pages and he’s just CRYING SO MUCH mr playboy man! mr flirty asshole! mr stoic! he’s fuckin crying and he cant hold a book without your help and aaaa and his whole story is about how he isnt really the negative stereotypes of a flirty character, he really REALLY values love and he feels depressed he cant love everyone who loves him, so he tries to fake it. And he tries to push people away whenever it seems genuine, but also like... entertain them enough that they dont feel he doesnt love them, i guess? and no matter how promiscuous a person is, they still cant love EVERYONE, you cant just force a relationship on them and say they must be asking for it cos they date other people and enjoy sex. its so depressing that he considers his biggest flaw that he wasnt able to force himself to love someone he didnt, especially when he did care about her, just as a best friend instead! if theyd just talked about it, it would have saved all this heartache for both of them! so then we start piecing together this book and it looks like his worst fears are confirmed, she spent her whole life waiting for him and hating him and its really fucking EXPLODINGLY SAD and then the quest is a bit confusing so i spent several days stuck on this point not knowing who to talk to next, going through random dungeons in case that somehow helped. turned out i did find the right spot but the quest just doesnt progress until you talk to the right person first GAH! stuck for five days on crying leon scene!! NOOOOOO but I finally got past it and CLIMACTIC HAPPY END or bittersweet end more like we find out we mistranslated one bit which was actually PAGE NUMBERS, and we were missing a page all along! and then the final page reveals that she actually moved on and found a new love and had a happy family and grew old together, and her only frustration with leon was imagining that he couldnt find the same thing, worrying that she’d betrayed him. So this wasnt a diary, it was actually a letter she wrote for him to find, having confidence he’d wake up someday and have another chance at happiness! She just wanted him to know that she kept his memory alive and she’s sorry and she was happy and AAAAAAUUUGH im tearing up again the bit that really got me was that we find out that leon’s favourite romance novel was actually written by her. It was so popular it survived into the modern day as a literature classic, and it convinces him that she really was happy with her new boyfriend if she could write something as beautiful as this. And he wants to embody the spirit of the book with you, and keep his new promise to her to have a happy family of his own :) ... AGHHHHHHHHAAAAAHHHHH why cant i marry everyone why do so many of them have plots where it seems like they wont be happy unless i love them... even now i dont really think the leon pairing is my favourite, i wish i could have had this plot as a friendship route! i think it would have resonated just as much since the whole backstory is about him being friends with someone who had unrequited love for him. i wanna be leon’s bestie and ultimate wingman! I like him a lot but I dont really think i wanna marry him! IM SO SORRY LEON AAAA he’s such a soulful beefcake dammit I’m sure he’d find a bazillion better lovers! I’m sure a lot of players did marry him! WHY DO I FEEL SO GUILTY AAAAA its not fair, aaaa arthur was the first one i dated and i also really care about him but in his case his way of acting in the romance isnt very different to when youre just friends so i dont think i wanna commit to that relationship maybe? it might change when i see his final random event but i dont get much ‘he’ll be happy with you’ vibes, its just strengthening their powerful brotp that they had from the start of the game. he feels like someone protagonist would indeed date, but theyd part again on friendly terms after it didnt work out, and then be amicable exes who still care a lot about each other. and I just feel like I wanna marry dylas even though he’s had the least tragic events so far. gahhhh! he just seems SO HAPPY dating you, and has loads of character development since it started, unlike the other two ive seen the dates for. he feels like he’s actually getting something out of this that he wouldnt if we were just friends? its so hard trying to weigh up the pros and cons of romance options in games when im inacapble of actually being attracted to anyone, its just ‘i care about you all and i wanna give you the best possible ending’. I haaaaate when games have it so that romance is always the best possible ending for every single character and they all suffer forever if you dont pick them :P and I havent even seen the romances with the other three dudes yet! GAHHHHH!! Theyre all the ones I wasnt immediately interested in dating, but that opinion could totally change, i could end up with a six way tie :P ... ALSO RANDOM BUT is anyone else really uncomfortable with the queerbaiting in this game? there is a LOt, a LOT of ‘lol maybe gay’, sometimes so clear that it seems the game is outright canonically stating this character is gay or bisexual yet you have no option to marry them unless youre the opposite sex. It gets REALLY uncomfortable with Dylas, he just,,, does not express any interest in women at all unless the player pursues him. And his mutual crush with doug is CONSTANTLY REFERENCED, and called out very clearly for what it is. IOf the game didnt keep pointing it out i would have been able to shrug it off as just accidental chemistry from a failed rivalry plotline or something, but we have EVERYONE saying ‘oh a lover’s quarrel’ and ‘be honest about your feelings’ and ‘i bet you wanna see doug in a swimsuit’ and ‘gee i really wanna see doug in a swimsuit’ and IT CANT BE ANY MORE CANON THAN THIS. And.. like.. Dylas even says he DOESNT wanna see women in swimsuits, he’s just here at the beach cos Doug might come along. He does not express any interest in women at all except the protagonist! It makes me feel SO uncomfortable! it feels like he’s actually gay, when with most other characters they seem bisexual?? I dunno how to explain it, thats just how it comes off to me. Why is there no option for him and doug to date, why cant i date him as the male protagonist?? His romance route is so totally gender neutral, i did the postgame protagonist swap cheat and it just feels more in-character for him this way. if im gonna steal him away from Doug i dont want it to be a weird gay conversion therapy type thing, it just feels so WEIRD. The one and ONLY stated crush he has on another character, and its gay, and theres NO OPTION FOR IT TO HAPPEN and then he suddenly becomes 100% straight and never talks about doug again if a fem protagonist dates him. SO WEEEEEIRD... I’m just gonna sit here on the non-canon bonus feature dylas x male protag train and never leave. If you cant have doug you shall have the transitioned me! Its funny cos he’s like the only batchelor i very vehemently cannot ship with fem protag, yet do with male protag :P but GAHHH leon deserves a family and i could give him a child and aaaaa SO HARD TO CHOOSE also i am sad that the postgame cheatmode lets you switch to any character but if its not one of the two protags its only your overworld model and not your face portraits. Its weird because every batchelor and batchelorette has the exact same full set of emotions and costumes, so why cant i access that?? its also a shame cos it means i cant roleplay my doug and dylas marriage properly :P CMON MAN WHY U EVEN TELL ME THEY IN LOVE IF THEY CANT BE IN LOVE :P they have the best portmanteau ship name too! douglas! :P