#All the mistakes I need to fix that I screenshotted from the first 13 chapters are side-eyeing me as I edit the new chapter instead

[jamietwat]

[crazy-loca-blog]

Personal thoughts on Open Heart Second Year, Chapter 18

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week and what I’d like to see in the next chapters, because none of my friends play Choices so I have no one to comment the books with.

Last week I was so, so overwhelmed (in a good way) for everything that happened at that gala that I couldn’t even begin to write a post. My head was a mess! I had so much information on my mind that it was impossible for me to get one nice paragraph. Luckily, this means this week I have so much to say! So get ready, because this post is a long one!

First of all, let me tell you that after what happened this week, I’m betting for a 20 chapter book. It’s the only way I can see them making a proper closure to the story (with chapter 19 focused on saving Leland Bloom’s wife AND Edenbrook, and chapter 20 focused on fixing our own mess with our LIs).

I have mixed emotions on this chapter. At first, I absolutely loved it. It gave me such a rollercoaster of emotions that I just couldn’t help loving it. I went from being surprised to see Aurora back, to laughing with Zaid and Baz treating a patient together, to almost crying with the night out scene. I was really hyped! But then I replayed the chapter and I began to notice all those small details that you don’t notice when you first read it, and yeah, I have to agree with a lot of people who are as invested in this series as I am: something is not adding up after the rewrites.

As a person who’s romancing Ethan, Chapter 17 was a HUGE step in the relationship with the MC. The guy finally got rid of all his morals and his visions of what’s ethically correct dismantled the diagnostics team (aka “he’s not our boss anymore”) and decided to make things public with the MC (not “official”, but “public”). Now that I look at that moment in retrospective, I might understand the scene made sense so that the writers could finally level the field with people who are romancing Rafael, Jackie and Bryce. But this is when the first problem arises: the relationship with Rafael, Jackie or Bryce has never been public either. Sure, there has been some PDA between them and the MC throughout the whole series, but it’s not like our friends can say “oh, they’re a thing”, it’s not something evident. Why didn’t they use the gala for that? I simply don’t get it! They didn’t need to be “official”, just “public”. It was so easy, and I think it would have made things easier for the rest of the book.

And then we have this time jump… which now I’m beginning to realize it wasn’t as huge as we originally thought! Sure, we skipped Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year, and we went from winter to spring in, literally, one screenshot. So it may seem it’s been a long, long time since the gala… BUT… the book has been settled on winter since forever now (there was already snow in Chapter 13 when we returned to work!), so even though we know it’s been over a month since the gala (because, and here I quote Ethan Ramsey, “this will actually stretch our budget for much longer than we expected”), it’s not like we’ve been on that limbo for a really, really loooong time!

Of course, this doesn’t justify the fact that the relationships with the LIs were affected by this time gap. And this is where I think the writers made a huge mistake. I actually said something about it already, but the fact that we’re not staying in Boston to continue our residency (even though we know in the end we’ll stay) may be the thing that it’s delaying the fact that we’re not official with our LIs. Again, Rafael is staying in Boston… after the Panacea scandal, Jackie will go wherever she’s accepted… Bryce was looking at a hospital in Chicago… and the more I replay the chapter, the more I think Ethan is overworking to avoid thinking about his own future (yup, he is a mess and he’s delaying the inevitable… as usual). But this doesn’t mean we don’t want to know what’s going on with our relationship… like… long distance? breaking up? enjoying it while it lasts? Chapter 18 was the right moment to have “the talk” (there were at least two moments in the chapter that would have worked perfectly: those free individual scenes that we had with our LIs… or during the night out, after Ethan joined the gang at the helipad) and it didn’t happen… and yes, it’s disappointing and frustrating. They missed a HUGE opportunity.

Despite all this, this chapter gave us a bunch of good scenes:

1. The hospital scenes. This was a brief moment, but it was simply beautiful. In Chapter 17, we realized that “everything was about the mission” and that seemed to be a breaking point for everyone at Edenbrook. Seeing all of them working as the huge team they are, everyone overworking and helping each other just to help as many people as possible gave me all those community vibes that we constantly hear about in this series. I definitely need more of this in Book 3. The fact that they also connected all this madness with the closure of our interns plots was a nice detail. Can you believe that Gary Garrison was definitely the “last man standing”? Also, did you notice that Sothy and Elijah’s plot changes depending on the choices you made in past chapters? And I want to think that Sienna and Mitch finally talking about what happened will give her the peace of mind she needs and deserves.

2. Bryce’s diamond scene. I had so much fun with the Lahelas in Book 2. I love these two… I just can’t stop making puppy eyes every time we have a chance to witness such a wonderful relationship between these siblings. And Keiki leaving to boarding school was the happy ending they deserved. I’m so glad to see that there won’t be a new drama for them and that their parents agreed to send Keiki to boarding school. I loved to see how much Bryce grew in Book 2 (you know that I’ve always loved him, but now I came to consider him a “national treasure” type of guy) and how he really made his biggest effort to become the best version of himself we’ve seen so far. I’m so proud of him that it hurts!

3. Esme’s plot. It was nice to see that the relationship with her actually changes based on our choices. It still bothers me that we won’t know if she did it on purpose or not (I really hope we get to know the truth by the end of the book), but I felt proud of defending her after seeing how she seemed to be the only one who actually cared about Levi in that negotiation between his parents and the board, where everything was about “how much is Levi worth”. And I have to say that I fully agree with what Esme tells us if we don’t defend her… let’s be honest, the main reason why we got away with all Mrs. Martinez stuff was because PB was already planning a Book 2 of what Ethan did for us at the hearing.

4. The night out with our friends. We asked for it for a really, really long time. Book 2 was so focused on the hospital stuff that we missed those moments with our friends. It was so different from Vegas! It was intimate, it was emotional, there was this much needed bonding between the gang… there was a heart to heart that was long overdue! It was definitely a proper temporary goodbye to them. Besides what I mentioned before about “the talk”, I don’t think I would’ve changed anything about this scene.

By now, the final chapters of the book seem pretty obvious. I mean… Leland Bloom is a BILLIONAIRE and he loves to negotiate. Will he save Edenbrook if we save his wife? Absolutely, there is no question! We know the man is an ass****, but we also know how much he ADORES his wife and how genuine their marriage is (it’s 100% true love). She is also a caring woman, so I definitely don’t want to see her die. But how will they approach it? And here is where I want to see something HUGE happening (fingers crossed!). We know that the diagnostics team has been reduced to three people: the MC, Baz, and Ethan. BUT, at the same time, we have a full staff of people available to help (in the words of Ethan, “The other departments have taken the diagnostics team’s lead”... which leads to an inconsistency because the team is supposedly dismantled). So not only I see our team solving the case, but also everyone at the hospital involved on it. I can see Caroline Bloom taken by the paramedics to be admitted to Edenbrook, the nurses taking care of her, our friends helping to solve the case as part of the diagnostics team, Bryce, Harper and Tanaka performing some surgery, Kyra working on the paperwork… I’d love to see that, in the end, saving Edenbrook was a group effort and not only something like “the diagnostics team saved the hospital from closing”. That would be so, so nice to see and it would give every single character in this book the recognition they deserve!

[icharchivist]

🐉 Check-in tag 🐉

Tagged by: @alteriius​ <3 hi!

1. Why did you choose your url?

Icha has been my nickname online for a really long time and i try to keep it in my urls at least as “brand recognization” i guess?? as for “archivist”, it was to have an url that was more fandom neutral than my previous ones. It is in reference to the bookman clan from dgm, who are archivists, since i always think fondly about dgm (and i did decide on the url when i was having long, long conversations about various Bookmen centric theories on my blog), but it serves double as it’s pretty generic and can just be my records there.

2. Any side-blogs? If you have them, name them and why you have them.

have an inactive one for otome games that i used years ago but haven’t touched since and i don’t feel like linking it ahah. Otherwise i have “sideblogs” that saves my past URLs (that i can use to save specific posts on in drafts).

3. How long have you been on tumblr?

I joined in huh. Late 2011 i think?? all i remember is that i have been here a few months before the first Mi//shapocalypse broke in April 2012. Tumblr veteran.

4. Do you have a queue tag?

Used to but not anymore.

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

oh man don’t judge me i was 16 and it was 2011, but i used to follow h//arry p//otter fanpage on facebook and noticed they all came from here so eventually i decided to join it “to the source” and well :/ here i am. Nowadays i can’t even bear looking at h//p contents but here i am still smh.

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

(btw your icon is amazing @alteriius <3) Aerith <3 because i’m having a ff7 rush again and i think Aerith is pretty neat. I love her a lot and i feel like the remake made her even more bubbling with life thanks to the HD stuff and i fell in love over and over again with her seeing her in the remake. And i mean, she’s goal.  This specific screenshot is just v pretty. Lately i’ve been mostly using Hisoka from a3 as an icon though and i may return to it sooner than later, because i care him v much as well and identify with him a bit. 

7. Why did you choose your header?

I just changed my header from the Spring chapter illustration from a3 which was them all napping together, that i had for the longest time bc i find it soft, to now just the troupe leaders in cat onesies, because i found this artwork yesterday and i love catboys. A3 charas are all precious to me i’m just happy to show them off yaknow?

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

*closes eyes and takes a deep breath* this post about FMA and the way each homunculus having an ironic death. it has over 25k notes now and it still gets notes regularly. If i had known it would have been this popular i would have toned down the cringey excitement i was showing because the reveal blew my mind - and would also have been more careful about some translation mistakes. but alas. 

Else i have mostly shitposts being popular here and there or some liveblog posts that got too popular for no reason (that one post of my h//x//h liveblog that keeps coming back in my notes, my detested </3)

9. How many mutuals do you have?

No clue omg??? I am not checking the list. Probably a hundred though??? plus it’s hard to picture considering a lot of them are inactive.

10. How many followers do you have?

2,933. Most of them are inactive though, p sure i reached this number near huh 2018?? and it’s been stagnant ever since, from the followers loss and the influx of new followers (which is not really many but enough to balance out)

11. How many people do you follow?

614 blogs but yeah similar too many inactive bc i never cleaned it in the ten years i’ve been here.

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

Oh, plenty. The most i have done must have been in the dgm fandom and maybe ff7?? 

13. How often do you use tumblr each day?

These days my dash is pretty dead, so i mostly check it the morning and the evening to catch up on the day and check it out from time to time during the day.

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

erg. Not really? nothing that i can think of, or at least not in public. Like, i had arguments with people i had met on tumblr but generally it was over discord. And idk if we can call any of those arguments winning... It’s a question of disagreement or annoyance over how people treat each other and it’s been either things that broke friendships or that water under bridge could fix. Nothing conclusive and i’d hate to frame arguments as a win-or-lose situation. 

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

hate them so much oh my god. They feel guilttripy and insulting a lot. And if not for me i would loath to put some guilt trip over people that follow me. People are willing to listen without having to make them feel bad about it. if i think the post has info that are very important i will still reblog it but i really loathe the idea of having to guilttrip to make a point come through.

16. Do you like tag games?

They’re fun! i just really forget to do them and i just don’t like chain ones, those that are like, in reblogs? new posts or ask posts are fine but reblog chains of multiple tag games are generally stuff i avoid to not post a veeery long post on people’s dash

17. Do you like ask games?

oh yeah love them!

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

I can think of a few but i’m too lazy to @ them DJFDLKFJDL and most of them aren’t people i talk to regularly enough to feel like i can cross that line of just @-ing them out of nowhere

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Nah i’m good aha 

20. Tags?

what if i don’t want to tag anyone though ddlfjd anyone who wants to do it can act like i tagged them it’s fine.

here we go o7

Thank you for the tag Allen <3