#I actually love Cinderella Phenomenon

[veepriv]

DELORA FUCKING DIED????? I HATE THIS FUCKING GAME

AHDJDHSISHS MY SHAYLAAAAAAAA

STILL I WILL BE PLAYING WALTZ’S ROUTE AND GETTING ALL THE BAD ENDS THO

[liketwoswansinbalance]

On the Subject of "All-Kinds-of-Fur:"

Link to the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale for reference. It's basically a variant of "Cinderella."

Also, if I have the inspiration for it, this could become part of a series, set during the peaceful days before the prequel events. Thus, if anyone would like to send in a request for the School Master brothers' reactions to a classic fairy tale or an SGE one, however obscure it may be, I might write it!

⸻

[Rhian enters the tower chamber looking distressed while Rafal is grading fourth-year students' theses on treachery, taboos, and the natural lines of family, that, when wrongly crossed, drive people insane and disrupt the fragile human psyche.

For an example of this so-called phenomenon (stolen from the plot of Hamlet), imagine a scenario as follows: a wife marries her husband's brother after her husband dies. While they may not be blood relations, this scenario is still off and rather strange, even if modern times could make more allowances for such a thing to occur and be socially-acceptable.]

Rhian: My fourth-year Class Captain had to run away whilst on her questing assignment!

Rafal: [absently, without looking up from the papers, slashing through lines in bloodred ink] Mm, shame. [He sips his tea.]

Rhian: [tries to smile but it looks uneasy and he begins to pace with anxiety.] No! It's... good... I suppose. [He cringes.] If she hadn't run into the Woods last night, she would've had to marry her father!

Rafal: [spits out his tea.] Who's her father? Not one of my graduates, surely. Even my curriculum standards rise above that, that rot.

Rhian: No, it's not one of yours. Simply some brazen king. I just... I wish I could do something. She was one of my best students. [He sighs dejectedly.] But I doubt the Pen will tolerate an intervention. We just have to let her tale play out.

Rafal: Well, is it worth working yourself up over? She got away. Maybe it's you who's too invested in your students’ lives. They can fend for themselves, you know... well, probably. Actually, some Evergirls can be dimwitted. [He pauses.] How about this?: you always have the option of throwing her a lovely funeral.

Rhian: Oh, forget it. I don’t expect you to understand. [He throws up his arms, flustered, and exits the room.]

[Rafal observes that his brother still looks rather sad. In fact, Rhian grows more worried with each passing day as the Storian writes of the poor girl's travails as a forlorn scullery maid in hiding.]

⸻

[Several months later, three days and three nights after each night of the ball and banquet in the Evergirl's fairy tale:]

Rhian: [elatedly, swelling with hope] Rafal! Rafal! Have you heard? My Class Captain might live to see her Happily Ever After! The young king is going to save her! She’s danced with him three nights in a row and he would take no other partner. Though, each night, she slips away and conceals herself in that hideous, asymmetrical coat. You've seen the Pen's illustrations, haven't you? And last night, she wore a dress that glistened like the stars! I just knew the Beautification Practice While Impoverished classroom simulations would pay off! I knew it! It's the sheer magic of what a little soap and water can achieve!

Rafal: [not listening to Rhian's enthusiastic raving] Uh-huh.

Rhian: [finally looks at Rafal more closely after his lackluster response.] Say, Rafal? Where did that patchwork blanket come from? Is it new? I feel like I’ve seen it before. Somewhere... [he muses.]

Rafal: [shrugs without looking up from his book.] Nowhere. You’re not still… sad about that tale, are you? It’s old news. And the Storian's been still about that tale for a good few hours. Maybe it'll be scrapped, storybook and all.

Rhian: [grits his teeth in frustration] Yes. I know. You weren't listening.

Rafal: [expressionlessly] Wasn't I? Regardless, Happily Ever Afters don't concern me.

Rhian: [tongue-tied, attempting to come up with a fitting retort] An-and, you need a good douse of soap and water too. You've got... soot and—is that walnut oil all over your hands?

Rafal: [rolls his eyes.]

⸻

[The next day:]

[Rhian devours the completed tale in one sitting and notices a discrepancy he assumes is a continuity error by the Storian: the vagabond princess disguised in the role of a scullery maid returned to her little cubbyhole below stairs to find that her coat, which she’d left in the shadows, had disappeared, seemingly stolen.

Perhaps, a creature of the night had made off with it, desperate to reclaim its skin.

Or perhaps, there had been an intervention.

Thus, the princess was forced to show her true, shining self to the king’s men hunting her down. In her gown, that gleamed like the stars, much like a bride's.

And Rhian has a feeling he knows why this Ending came to be.]

⸻

[A week later:]

Rhian: [enters, humming about wedding bells to himself.]

Rafal: You look well. Did something go right?

Rhian: Yes! Something nice came in the post today, brother. My former student and the young, foreign king have invited us to their wedding. And look! Even you got an invitation, too. [He laughs to himself and makes a face of mock fright, lowering his voice and gnarling his hands into claws.] Whooo, they probably didn't want the Evil brother to curse them during a christening someday, so you'll probably get a golden plate and sweetmeats to spare at the wedding feast in order to "appease" you.

Rafal: [glares at him.]

Rhian: [drops the act.] Ahem. Anyway, we’ve got to pack for spring in Altazarra. Bring some non-black, festive clothes, if you have any. Oh, and bring a less ugly coat than that scruffy old blanket, will you?

Rafal: I’m not attending. I don’t like inane balls or sentimental Ever Afters, but have fun.

Rhian: Are you sure about that?

Rafal: Positively.

Rhian: [holds up an illustration of the princess' cubbyhole from the tale he’s been scrutinizing for the last few days.] Then what’s this shadow the Storian’s inked in darker than the rest? It looks quite a lot like a human form.

Rafal: Trick of the light. Just be glad Evil didn’t prevail this time, and call it a day. My side will win next time to be sure.

Rhian: [smirks knowingly] I guess I owe my peace of mind and sanity to a thief then.

Rafal: [deadpans] Run along, Ever. Pip-pip. You've got a wedding to attend, have you not?

[variouspolltournaments]

Anti-Propaganda is not allowed. Please only give reasons to vote for something and not give reasons to vote against something.

Propaganda

Hiyoko Tosaka: human girl dating birds. extremely strong. the way she speaks is also hilarious. i love her.

Lucette Riella Britton: I really like her as a protagonist because she's not your typical romance visual novel mc girl just ready to fall in love once the initial conflict has been sorted through (which I'm not shitting on btw, I love those MCs too). I like an MC who is headstrong and independent and it takes them a while to fall in love because they're too focused on their goal to worry about romance.

And that's what Lucette is but it's so much more than that because she's genuinely a horrible person and she doesn't actually believe that she or others are capable of love. She was brainwashed and gaslit as a child into believing that literally everyone in the world except for her mother would only be kind to her (even down to small things like smiling at her) if they wanted or needed something from her. By the time she's 17 and the game has begun, she's fully internalized that lesson and she's cold, rude, and all around pretty heartless.

And I really really like that Lucette starts out with those traits because I feel like so often in visual novel games, the MC is kinda this vague character that nearly every player should be able to relate to, but Lucette has a personality, and it's a bad one, and that makes her so interesting! Especially since you get to see her grow and change into a kind, loving, and trusting person throughout the game.

So often hero's quests are about good people who want to be great, but Lucette's quest is awesome because her whole story is a unique, beautiful, and interesting redemption arc about a bad person trying not to turn out worse than she already is and dooming her kingdom in the process.

[louisetteschuunishenanigans]

"... Fuck it, I'm in! I'm all about that zero accountability life!" ~Lucette, probably

Guys I randomly remembered about Cinderella Phenomenon, me and my besties (the gal who introduced the game to us and the guy who wanted NOTHING to do with otome) read like 2 routes of that together in 2019 and it was legit good?? What happened to that??? Anyway the thought was. Karma was cursed by a witch bc he kept seducing women for the lulz and didn't care about them or their feelings and cast em aside eventually, right? And so she put a curse on him that 1. Every woman who sees him falls in love with him and 2. If he falls in love with one of them he turns into a monster and scares them off Which means her entire plan hinged on him NOT being as bad a person as the witch thought he was. Like what if her plan to get back at him / make him change through s u f f e r i n g backfired horribly by virtue of him actually being exactly as bad as he seemed?? Girl woulda had the dude going full on Duke Venomania in chat and for what??? Anyway AU where Karma never tried to redeem himself and just went Fuckboy Times Eleven using the Beauty part of the curse and never suffered from the Beast part precisely bc he didn't give a single fuck. And in his route Lucette is The Mikulia in Venomania!Karma's harem who's immune to his curse but still joined him bc "What, I get to leave the family whose guts I hate and go back to live in a castle with this loaded royal hottie while doing nothing to better myself? Neato."

[loosesodamarble]

Hi Erika! 💕

I don't know much about otomes, but hey what are the questions for if not to find out ^^

If you could answer for me 15, 22, 23?

Others not knowing is kinda why I made the ask game in the first place! I wanna be able to talk about my dating sims now that I'm opening up about them on this blog!

15) Favorite trope

I'm a sucker for the guy who is stupidly, insanely strong to the point where it's more concerning than reassuring.

Nayuta Yagami... Abraham Van Helsing... Kinji... Ion...

They're all so powerful and it's so much fun~!

Their strength is the source of great fight scenes and also great hilarity. Like Nayuta breaking one of those strength testing games and Abraham...

HE GOT SHOT OUT OF A CANNON! Also it took until the third game in the Code Realize series for the cannon's maker/operator to make it safe for others to use KJHiushgahslrtjasiu! It was just naturally built for Abraham in mind...

But yeah, I like the stupid strong guys.

22) Favorite love interest

AKSJhfiuhashgkjsahiu SAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINT~!

He’s so fine and handsome and magical and dangerous and bcjdbchidhchcidbcusownucidwidofnjcw!

Saint Germain is a very special man.

I was kinda put off by his outfit at first but I got used to it the longer I played the common route. And then when I actually got onto Saint's route...

Saint's default is having his eyes closed. But... he opens his eyes and... AND!

KAJSHDFIULAEHTHAETKJHAETIUAEHT!

It's so unfair.

And the story we get in Saint's route! AH! AAAAAHHHHHH! It's so tragic and it hurt so good to play through!

I just can't get enough of romances that come with a lot of trauma and tragedy~!

23) Favorite game art

THIS BABY FROM KARMA'S ROUTE IN CINDERELLA PHENOMENON!

That chivalrous kiss on the hand is kahdifahsiruth! WOOOOO~! Karma baby~!

And the way he calls Lucette a "delightful handful" (not exact phrasing since it's been a while since I played the route, regardless). It's just so charming and really shows how princely he is~!

[uefb]

Why do you think there’s a pattern of Theseus being abusive/overly aggressive in Fantastic Beasts fanfic? It’s been driving me up the wall trying to find Newt and Theseus fanfic that doesn’t make them OOC especially Theseus, and idk, in the context of Newt being Autistic I find it disturbing. Like sure, Theseus is hot-headed and loses his temper, he doesn’t always understand Newt, but those traits seem overtly exaggerated in a lot of fandom content.

Obsessed with this ask. I have been thinking about it all day, and am just now getting to write it up! Thinking about it in the background of my statistics class almost singularly got me through its sensory and anxiety hell. /sweat-laugh emoji/ So thank you!

Please remember, all of this is based on my own perspectives, knowledge, and headcanons, as well as canon clues. Nothing here is definitive and is open for respectful conversation! (Not directed specifically at you, salamander, just since this is a public blog I like to cover my bases. ^_^)

Buckle up: major autistic info dump incoming

Alright, so, my initial thoughts are that...

Obviously, there was a decent chunk of Newt fic written between 2016 and 2018 before CoG came out, that first film where we really got to see Theseus as a character, for who he really is (especially since they cut that letter from him to Newt at beginning of FBWTFT, that starts with "little brother," which is just pretty endearing). IMHO, this two-year gap means people had a wide open playing field to build the character themselves. Here's a few thoughts on that:

The framework for the entire Wizarding World, narratively, is the Harry Potter series. Boy wizard, shunned by family, isolated from socialization -- Outcasts have always been the backbone of She-who-must-not-be-named's stories. It's compelling. We love it, we lap it up. With only one FB film out before 2018 and Newt being such a unique protagonist, I think it's likely people fell back on the more typical Harry-Dudley trope to create a compelling backstory for Newt, using that tried-and-true fantasy Cinderella-type trope.

Second, from what I can tell, there was a lot less serious consideration of Newt actually being autistic in the early years of the fandom. (I only "joined" relatively recently myself, despite going to the first 2 movies on opening day, but I'm nothing if not fastidious in consuming every scrap of historical content when I develop a new interest, lol.) I've read pages of threads and plenty of "think pieces" attributing Newt's behavior to trauma-related social anxiety and/or his profession as a magizoologist. I absolutely buy the latter (adjusting body language for one's profession), but not entirely the former. (Personally, Newt doesn't strike me as an inherently anxious person--he strikes me as an inherently autistic one who also sometimes experiences anxiety. Discomfort and anxiety aren't the same thing, but people often conflate them, imho.) Anyway, THAT BEING SAID, I've noticed in quite a few fics that people write Theseus as being part of that implied social trauma, via sibling bullying that rises beyond typical sibling harassment. People perhaps tried to explain Newt's behavior by making him, at the very least, overshadowed by Theseus (and ashamed of it) or, at the very worst, abused and/or neglected by his family.

Also, quite simply: people process their own family trauma via fic. I think it's highly likely Theseus just served a sibling or parental role for some people in stories. (The abundance of abusive!Thranduil fic in the LotR fandom in the early 00s is another example of this.) Nothing wrong with using fic to process feelings and life experiences (god knows I do, it's horrifically obvious and always has been lmao), but this bulletpoint is still one explanation for the pre-CoG "Theseus being a dick in fic" phenomenon.

Plus, fanfic doesn't occur in a vacuum. Even when new canon info comes out, existing fic and whatever the going/contemporary fanon is often impact how new writers write their characters, even post-CoG. (And how those characterizations are received by the larger fandom--that reception may subsequently impact how writers maintain or change their characters in the future, imho.)

As for the current reasons Theseus is often OOC in post-CoG fic...

Well, I have my theories, but I am also not entirely sure. However, I feel pretty confident it has to do, primarily, with points 1 and 4.

Leta Lestrange and the Scamander Brothers - Honestly, I think people likely are pretty offended on Newt's behalf for the Leta/Theseus marriage. In mainstream media, we're kind of trained to think that dating your friend's ex is ultimate betrayal--it's difficult for people to imagine a world in which a person who marries their brother's ex is a good person. (...I was once in a friend group where we had all dated the same girl at some point, but we were all either ridiculously honest or autistic so we just--wait for it--talked about it and moved on.) That being said, I never read Leta & Newt as overtly romantic (then again, I also didn't know Bunty liked Newt until the 4th time I watched CoG), so I don't entirely get this one to the degree that I think some people viscerally feel this. But I expect some people see that and assume it says something much larger about Theseus' character than it does. (I do think it says a lot about Theseus that he loves Leta, but I don't think it says the same things about him that some other people do -- I think it speaks more to his similarities to Newt [compassion and positive outlook] than it does to stealing Newt's Hogwarts sweetheart. But I digress.)

Something Did Happen at Some Point - Now, there is undeniably a distance between the brothers that we, as viewers, don't necessarily know the origin of. (So I think I may have mentioned in my letters that [my brother & I] have quite a complicated relationship. // Does he want to kill you? // Frequently.) Have they always been like that? Is it new? Is it because of the age difference? Because they have different personalities? (Though I will argue until I'm blue in the face that they're actually extraordinarily similar people, at their cores.) Is it because Newt got expelled, or because Theseus scooped up Leta, or because Theseus expresses emotion through touch & Newt jerks away from touch he doesn't initiate himself, or because because because because because? I don't know. But there is something there and, based on the "complicated relationship" comment, it sounds like it is something that likely developed over time. So imho - I think some people see that and just lean in way too hard. Like, pedal to the medal, 0 to 60 too hard.

Theseus is Snarky to Newt on Multiple Occasions - Mostly based around how Newt directs his life, carries himself, etc etc. For example, it would be easy to take that whole scene before and after Newt's travel hearing in CoG and assume Theseus is an overprotective, condescending, and ableist prick. But if we look below the surface (and the stage directions in the screenplay help, too. When he says "maybe a little less... / like me. / well, it can't hurt" the instructions say 'not without fondness', or something like that), it's pretty glaringly obvious he doesn't mean to be that way. Even condescending behaviors usually have causal correlates, even if we can't see them on the surface. (Believe me -- and this is something we both touched on in DMs, salamander, I'm just repeating for the sake of the ask -- well-meaning pep talks and encouragement can still drip with condescension when loved ones think you need guidance because they "love you and know better " and you're just too autistic or too idealistic or too naive or whatever.) Ultimately, whether due to a failure to approach these snarky exchanges with grace and nuance, or because it can make a good fic to put brothers at odds, IDK -- but I expect this particular point plays into some people's decisions to interpret Theseus in a way I view as OOC.

Ease of Narrative ~ Nuance is hard - I mean, this one explains itself. Writing characters in a nuanced manner that allows digging into the messy horrible confusion of relationships--embedded as they are within families and societies and personal & general history--is not easy. It takes not only patience and significant effort as a writer, but it also takes a degree of self-awareness and maturity that we all reach at different points. I'm not there yet myself (there's no real arrival -- life's not a perfect graph), but still: My fic writing is very different now at 32 (with 14 years of 'adulthood' and 12 years of therapy under my belt) than it was when I was writing about adults when I was 15. (And, yes, I still have my first posted HP fic up on MuggleNet and FFnet, so you don't just have to take my word for it lmao.) To be very clear, this isn't me being ageist or whatever: I'm just saying that I often get the sense while reading fic where Theseus is reallllly overly aggressive that the writer is sometimes either very new to creative writing (and good for them! we love new writers! keep writing, lovelies!), or else quite young, and thus still acquiring life experience that is going to improve their work as they age, every single day.**

Sibling Experience - Not having personal or narrative experience with an age gap like Newt and Theseus have. I'm an older sibling by 7.5 years, which is close to Theseus & Newt's age difference. I basically half-raised my younger brother, so I have a real soft spot for that kind of sibling relationship, which comes across in most of my fics (LotR & FB). It's hard to imagine the sort of borderline sibling-parental love, responsibility, and anxiety that can permeate those kind of relationships if you haven't experienced or seen it represented in media yourself. This is just a theory, of course---I have no actual data on this being actually related to his OOCness.

What else? What do you or others think?

Final very random thought

I also think a lot of people forget that autism runs in families. So yes, Theseus doesn't always "get" Newt (god, no, lol) and he doesn't have guidance on what to do when he doesn't, but it is highly unlikely he hasn't seen behavior similar to Newt's before, whether in a parent or cousins, an aunt/uncle or something else. People *also* tend to forget, IMHO, that subclinical traits are often present in direct family members of an autistic person--Theseus' rigid thinking, for example, isn't necessarily "autistic", but he may get Newt better than people think for certain reasons we never have an opportunity to see in the script. (Not that the movies are paying *that* much attention to the actual research or autism presentations lmao, but I'm just saying it is a possibility). Being able to relate to a smaller version of someone's struggles can simultaneously make one both a better support and a worse one in a lot of ways. (And certain autistic traits can even rub up against each other poorly in different people--I have a few acquaintances that rub me the wrong way because our "symptoms" manifest in very different ways and their natural behavior triggers some of my own sensory issues or overdeveloped sense of justice or whatever. Conversely, my ADHD tendency to be 20 minutes late to every hang gives one of my autistic friends a panic attack every time -- I feel terrible, but all we can both do is try to adjust the behavior around our symptoms. And sometimes the same traits--firmly held beliefs, for example--bump into each other explosively, which I have experienced in fandom myself: two autistic people w diametrically opposing views interacting, but because we process information in similar ways even with very different perspectives, no progress can be made before someone shuts down.) BUT I BRING THIS UP BECAUSE, I do think it's possible to headcanon that some of Newt and Theseus' conflict (which does exist) could even be rooted in differing forms of neurodivergence or presentation of subclinical symptoms.

The world is a big place and there's so many possibilities. These are just some of my thoughts on why Theseus is often portrayed in a way I find to be OOC!

Asterisked footnote under cut -

**I'm trying to convey what Sandra Cisneros does much better in her short story "Eleven." That we, all of us, carry our entire lives and what we have seen inside of us at all times, and I think that's what we bring to our writing.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

[princess-polls]

Is there any character that's obscure that you love and were excited to see submitted?

I was very excited to see that someone submitted Karma and Rod from Cinderella Phenomenon! (I actually just played that game for the first time last month and I really liked it)

Because the fandom is pretty small I wasn't sure if anyone was going to submit them, but I'm glad someone did!

[dreamieotome]

Taking A Break From

MLQC - I feel I am so behind on the story and I’m so confused on the plot. I am dreading jumping back into it :’)

Mystic Messenger - I played through all the routes and then i lost my account RIP LOL so I’m trying to slowly restart it and get all the endings (I’m a completionist)

LoveUnholyc - I love prettybusy but by god they have such unfriendly UI and game mechanics like trying to play the game actually gives me mental damage. I’ve finished Hi’s route.

Finished/Dropped & Fave Route/Character

A3! (company discontinued the EN version)

Amnesia: Memories (Toma</3)

Ayakashi Romance Reborn

Bustafellows (Mozu)

Cindrella Phenomenon

Collar X Malice (Kei)

Cupid Parasite (Shelby)

Ikemen Revolution

Ikemen Sengoku

Ikemen Vampire (on my knees for Arthur)

JackJeanne (Minorikawa)

Lover Pretend (Riku)

Midnight Cinderella

Mystic Code (William's boobs haunt me to this day)

My Candy Love

Nameless: The One Thing You Must Recall

Olympia Soiree (Kuroba & Akaza)

Obey Me! (dropped bc I dont like the company LOL i still have a soft spot for Mammon and Beel tho)

Paradigm Paradox (Kamui)

Princess of The Moon (Seraphino)

Star Project

SWD: Blood In Roses

SWD: Destiny Ninja 2+

SWD: Guard Me, Sherlock!

SWD: Lost Island

SWD: Lost Alice+

SWD: Modern Cinderella

SWD: The Niflheim

SWD: Wizardess Heart+ (I... have so many feelings about this one)

Tengoku Struggle: Strayside (YONA)

Variable Barricade (ICHIYA♡♡♡)

Wannabe Challenge (dropped)

I swear I must have played ALL of the Shall We Date series lmao

I will eventually make individual posts reviewing all of them bc I have. Thoughts™ . Especially with games that don't have much media presence online. Many people worked hard on them, and I think they deserve to be remembered (even if they're terrible) (looking at you, Princess of the Moon) (what the fuck was that)

[ga-yuu]

I hope you don't mind me asking you this but have you ever thought of playing otome games from switch? games like Amnesia, Piofiore, Olympia Soiree, Café Enchante, Cupid Parasite, Birushana, etc. ?? they have beautiful and thoughtful MCs!

Thought? I WANT to play these games but too bad I don't own switch. But yeah, I can play it on a PC using an emulator. I downloaded Piofiore and played like 1 chapter of the prologue and didn't continue because I didn't have time(not that it was boring, it was very interesting). I've played the mobile version of Amnesia (only the prologue because you have to pay for playing the routes) and I've seen the anime (was quite boring!).

Cafe Enchante and Birushana are on my MUST PLAY LIST, but I haven't officially played them myself because...again, I have no time. But let me tell you, I sometimes watch playthroughs of these games on youtube. There is a youtube called dirili , who narrates the stories. I may not sit through the whole route but I listen to certain chapters of each game in the background when I'm doing something else. If you can count that as playing a game, then I've played:

Code realize - Lupin's route.

Collar x Malice - Little bit of Enamoto and Sasazuka

Period cube - Zain

Birushana - Tomomori (this asshole!), Noritsune (only that one scene where Tomomori and Shigehira dress Shana as a girl! I played that on loop!)

Reine des fleurs (one of the most visually pretty otome games I've ever seen! and there is also a blonde hair blue eyes guy!)

Now the ones I've actually played include:

Diabolik lovers (first two games)

Ozmafia

Sweet fuse

Love spell written in the stars.

Cinderella Phenomenon

Locked heart

Hakuouki 1st game(only a little bit of the prologue)

Most of the Ikemen series

Court of darkness (Mostly prince's path)

Then some very mediocre other games on mobile (these are those when I first started getting into otome games)

And yeah, I do think the MCs in these games are extremely beautiful. Even if some of them have long brown hair, at least they have a unique-looking hairstyle (for example Ichika from Collar x Malice) they wear beautiful-looking dresses (for example Cardia from Code realize and Shana from Birushana). They all still look very beautiful and actually looks like a main character of a game.

[ad-hawkeye]

can you be a hater for like three seconds and give drop your least favorite otome boy list

this ask has been making me laugh all week i hope you know how much i appreciate you anon HAHA

okay. OKAY. oh my god see this is actually hard, because it's rare for me to hate characters.

irrationally disliking characters? common. very common. hating? rare. but by god, when i hate them, i hate them.

i also haven't played too many otomes because i know most of them aren't like. my type?? i guess?? i'm so picky. i don't really like common tropes (kabedon for example), i don't like most otome mcs, i don't like super dominant men, i don't get a kick out of fan service. so already you can just. Predict. which otome men i wouldn't like.

BUT. not to hate on this guy too much. but if there's any other otome boys out there even remotely similar to sasazuka from cxm. i will not like them. it's honestly a matter of preference and sasazuka unfortunately was handcrafted in a lab to be the exact opposite of what i tend to like

my "type" for fictional otome boys is usually: pathetic (but they have to be very competent at what they're good at. its about the contrast), emotional constipation, genuine and well meaning despite their flaws, respects women, probably gets pegged, able to get flustered

so if you just. reverse all of these. those are my least fav boys.

oh also as for irrational dislike, i hate characters who are too perfect. no flaws (this includes fluffy ones like 'awh he doesnt take good care of himself bc he loves others too much'), perfect at everything without even practicing (... honestly an example being most of the tot boys. which. artem imo didn't land under this category until YEAR THREE AND IN THIS ESSAY I WILL-)

i also tend to dislike "true route boys" and the only true route boy i don't actively dislike or get annoyed by is waltz from cinderella phenomenon.

tl;dr - i feel like i'd hate a LOT more otome boys but i tend to avoid otomes i don't vibe with which prevents me from even learning about them in the first place. which. hm. s-self care??

[dynamite-derek]

Final Fantasy and Accepting the Warts of Age

Note: This is the first of a planned series on the Final Fantasy franchise. I plan on posting these on my own website, vidyathoughts.com but for now I will also crosspost here. I hope you enjoy!

A mixture of reality and fantasy

The origins of Final Fantasy are pretty well known. Hironobu Sakaguchi wanted to make a role playing game but the genre was not a proven commodity in Japan. Then Dragon Quest came out and changed everything. Dragon Quest would go on to become such a phenomenon that according to a Game Informer interview with current series producer Yu Miyake, following the release of Dragon Quest 3, Japanese police requested that Enix not release new Dragon Quest titles on weekdays because too many kids were skipping school in order to buy the game. Even before 3, Dragon Quest proved that the role playing genre could be successful in Japan and Sakaguchi was given the go ahead to start making his own RPG. So a team of seven individuals went on to make the first title in what would go on to be one of the biggest franchises in the world.

The cute version of the FF origin story that gets repeated time and time again is that Square was a company on the verge of financial ruin and the title was named “Final Fantasy” because it was the company’s last shot at success. If Final Fantasy were to be a failure, it would indeed be the final fantasy title Square would ever produce because the company would be out of business. This tale has likely been embellished because, well, it’s cute. Who doesn’t like a Cinderella story? 

“The name ‘Final Fantasy’ was a display of my feeling that if this didn’t sell, I was going to quit the games industry and go back to university. I’d have had to repeat a year, so I wouldn’t have had any friends – it really was a ‘final’ situation,” Sakaguchi said in an interview with MCV UK in 2007. But in an interview with Chris Kohler of Wired from 2009, series composer Nobuo Uematsu stated that: It’s true that Sakaguchi was going to quit, but the bigger reason, the real reason, was that Square was going to go bankrupt and the designers believed that it would be the company’s swan song.

And most recently, you have a keynote speech that Sakaguchi gave in 2015. Casey Baseel of Sora News translated what he had to say about the naming of the franchise like this: ”The team had already decided they wanted something that could be easily abbreviated using the Roman alphabet. They were also set on something that could be condensed into a four-syllable abbreviated version in Japanese, and FF (pronounced ‘efu efu’ in Japanese), fit both criteria. Given the genre the game fell into, making one of those Fs ‘fantasy’ was a no-brainer. But what about the other one? Actually, ‘Final’ wasn’t the team’s first choice – the initial idea was to call the game Fighting Fantasy. However, they had to nix that plan when they discovered there was already a board game called Fighting Fantasy, which was in turn based on a series of British gamebooks.”

Stuff of folktales. Would the fun origin story for Fighting Fantasy be like “Square realized they didn’t have a fighting chance unless this game succeeded. And it was a Fantasy title. So the title Fighting Fantasy was born.” I like to picture the warrior class as some sort of Paul Bunyon character with a chocobo as a blue ox. I think it’s fitting that a fantasy franchise has fantastical and exaggerated origins.

Personal failings

My first experience with the Final Fantasy franchise was with Final Fantasy VI (III in the U.S.) on the Super Nintendo. I was a poor kid who was coping with my lack of access to Final Fantasy VII by playing the next best thing my game rental store had. I tried to get into it but it was difficult because I knew the GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME FOREVER was out there and I just couldn’t play it because I didn’t have a Playstation. Eventually though, I would get there and become a fan of it all. I loved moogles and I wanted more of them.

So like any person who discovers their new favorite franchise for the first time, I needed to experience every single game that it had to offer in some way. Even as a middle schooler, I was savvy with emulators. How else would I play Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension? So instead of being a responsible member of society and purchasing the easily available Final Fantasy Origins on Playstation 1, I instead downloaded NESticle and a rom of Final Fantasy and…boy was it not for me. I saw the heights the franchise would get to and this just didn’t compare. Where were the fancy summons? The card games? The story?

I feel like this is probably a very common experience when trying to play the old Final Fantasy games. The franchise wasn’t always about delivering a game and a story, it was at one point just a game with a story as scenery dressing. I would go on to play Final Fantasy I on the NES as an adult and was able to see the beauty in it, but I will never forget running into a brick wall the first time I played the game.

Actually playing the game

Final Fantasy I is a different experience from what I was used to. While it is turn based like those Playstation games, it feels like more of an adventure game than the later titles. The player will need to really explore the world they are in in order to find out where to go next. You have the basics of your journey: Everything is fucked and you need to restore the light of the four crystals in order to make things right. The four crystals are representative of the four elements (Earth, Air, Water and Fire) so your adventures will take you to those biomes far and wide across this massive – for the time – world.

The NPCs do give you hints about what to do next, but they don’t hit you over the head with it. There isn’t a line of dialogue that explicitly tells you that you need the rosetta stone from the sunken shrine in order to understand the people of Lufenia, which will then lead you to the tower of mirages, which will eventually get you into a fight with Tiamat. You have to talk to everyone and piece it together. You have to explore.

As you explore, you will be slammed with random encounters. Since you aren’t expected to know where to go on your first playthrough, a lot of your grinding might feel natural. Even still, when you first get to an area, you’re probably not gonna be able to waltz up to the boss and smack them down. In later Final Fantasies, I find that if you just don’t run away from fights, by the time you get to the boss of an area you will probably be well equipped enough to defeat them. This is not the case in Final Fantasy I. Grinding is a big part of the gameplay. The first time I played the original Final Fantasy, I waltzed over to the Chaos Shrine to fight Garland and got my ass handed to me because I didn’t spend enough time beating up goblins.

While a lot of people might look at grinding as cumbersome, I think it’s important to note that it was a big part of the gameplay. You weren’t playing for the story with this game, you were playing for the adventure and part of said adventure was fighting a lot of battles. It was also about keeping track of your inventory and using magic responsibly. Instead of magic points like later entries use, the original Final Fantasy uses magic charges. It’s a system much like you’d see in Dungeons & Dragons where you can only use your spells so many times until you rest to recharge them. Originally, there was no way to recover your magic outside of this. If you wasted all of your Fir3 (Firaga) charges on random enemies, that was it. You couldn’t use it again until you rested. Need it for a boss? Too bad. Go back and try again.

When your main gameplay loop involves fighting a lot of battles, your strength becomes more apparent as you play making progress feel really significant. Let’s say you just got done dealing with Mount Gulug and you head back to the first area of the game, Cornelia. When you get there, you’ll find that those goblins that you had to wail on in order to ensure Garland didn’t knock you down aren’t so bad anymore. Even your White Mage can probably one shot them! This isn’t an experience unique to this particular Final Fantasy, but when a lot of your random battles are won by the skin of your teeth it really does feel quite special here.

The battle system itself, primarily attributed to Akitoshi Kawazu (though I’ve also seen Hiroyuki Ito credited), is truly turn based. You can attack, use magic, use items or run. Barebones, but you can take as long as you want to select what you want your character to do, which might feel strange to series veterans more accustomed to the ATB system. I’ll get more into THAT system in the first game that uses it: Final Fantasy IV. The basics of FF1’s system would carry the first three games of the franchise, though some elements around the battle system get changed in those titles. In the first game, I would say the combat is fairly simplistic and the actual gameplay is more carried by things you do on the periphery like item conservation, but I think they expand things a bit in the next two games. This is a fine baseline.

Changing things up

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the screenshots I am providing for this game come from the Pixel Remaster. In this version of the game, they make things a little easier for the player. Shops sell ethers, you generally don’t need to spend as much time grinding and there is an NPC in Cornelia that specifically exists to tell you where to go. The Pixel Remaster tries to take this ancient title that middle school me rammed his head into fruitlessly and make it accessible to more people. It is nice in the sense that it will allow more people to play the first Final Fantasy, but is that really the same experience?

When I first started the Pixel Remaster, the very first thing I did was walk over to the chaos shrine to fight Garland. My head was going back to my middle school days where I was mercilessly killed by what a lot of people consider a joke boss. I didn’t do any grinding and I stepped in and…I just won. And in like five hits to boot. Not feeling confident before a boss? Just quicksave. Gone was that need to grind, instead it felt like I was playing the game on fast forward. Just like with later Final Fantasy titles, I would go from location to location and if I just didn’t run away, by the time I reached the boss, I would be well equipped enough to win. Sure, some of the crystal guardians (the four fiends) were tough battles that would feature one party member getting killed, but most of the time these fights would be uneventful.

Looking around to see if I was misremembering my experience with Final Fantasy I, I found a reddit post that said the remaster was made for people with jobs or had better things to do. In a sense, I agree, this game does get to the point a lot quicker…but is that really Final Fantasy I?

I think in order to get the true experience with the original Final Fantasy, you need to toss up that emulator – or NES classic, or NES or whatever you have at your disposal – and throw yourself at hordes of enemies. As I said earlier, the original Final Fantasy is not a game you play through for the story. If FF1 had a narrative as engrossing as Chrono Trigger but was locked behind this really hard to approach (in a modern sense) video game, I would say it’s necessary to ‘dumb it down’ so people can experience it. I don’t know if I see it that way with the Pixel Remaster though. Sure, you can beat the game this way and that’s great for people that just want to play every single Final Fantasy game and get on with their lives, but I don’t think you’re getting the authentic experience. The tedium that comes with random battles, the rage you might feel after finishing a dungeon only to die on your way out of it and the grind is every bit as much of what Final Fantasy is as the four crystals are.

Now that’s not to say I think all of the changes are ‘experience ruining.’ I think most people consider video games of yesteryear to be a little obtuse in order to sell strategy guides. That’s a slightly cynical way to look at it, but how the hell else were you supposed to figure out Casltevania 2? Were you supposed to just blindly bomb every single wall in Legend of Zelda in order to find a path through the dungeon or were you supposed to find a copy of Nintendo Power to very helpfully point you in the right direction? So quality of life features that don’t actually alter gameplay, like the hint giving dancer NPC and the remake offering a wide variety of maps, are fine by me. You’d have to pay a premium to see these in a strategy guide in the past, so I don’t think having easy access to that content is game ruining. You can also just ignore it! You can’t ignore not needing to grind though.

I also think this specific remake of the original Final Fantasy does one thing way better than some past remakes. It retains the magic charge system. Your level 8 flare (nuke) spell can only be used so many times and its usage is independent of your other magic spells. This makes it so if you want to have an authentic experience where you have to strategize your magic usage in dungeons, you still can. Having all your magic tied to the same magic points system changes things too drastically and I think most players could not forsake quality of life items to experience something closer to the original.

And visually, while I prefer the charm of the older sprites, I love that this remake does its best to remake those and present them as something new. Here I have compiled the playable character sprites from the original and the Pixel Remaster. In case it isn’t obvious, the order goes NES, Remaster, NES, Remaster. You can tell the new ones are based off of the old ones, even if some of the changes are odd (I miss my fighter having red hair). I compare the way this looks to how the Super Mario All-Stars games look. Yeah, the sprites are redone but they are close enough to the original where it still feels authentic. Now, let’s take a look at the GBA remake sprites.

They just look completely different. There’s no ‘trying to retain the spirit’ of the original, your characters look completely different. Yeah, your thief looks more like a thief but it’s a different guy entirely! The class ups no longer look like ‘grown up’ versions of their original selves, they just look more advanced. Your black wizard no longer looks like Sabin, he looks like Vivi! I think a good remake that is trying to be faithful should try to embody the spirit of the original as much as possible and just changing things this much feels superfluous. So I’m glad Square Enix did something else for the Pixel Remasters. The best option would be to include the original game with all remastered versions of the game but that will likely never happen.

I’m only going to touch briefly on the music. I don’t think Final Fantasy I hits the heights of the later entries, but there are definitely some classics in there. The battle theme is iconic, for instance. I think the original versions of these songs are definitely the way to go. Something about the remixes the Pixel Remaster collection has just sounds too pure. They sound like something off of an RPG maker assembly line. Thankfully the console ports offer an option to stick with the original songs but for Steam players like myself…uh, well, I hope you know how to mod!

My experience through the early Final Fantasy titles for this series will be through the Pixel Remasters just because they are the most convenient ways to play them in 2023. But I have also played each of these games before. Maybe not to completion, but I know what they are supposed to feel like. But for people who just want to play every Final Fantasy game, I encourage you to at least try to play the original version instead of the Pixel Remasters. It just isn’t the same experience. If you’re a returning player though, nothing wrong with trying a different way to experience a classic.

Notable characters

I have wanted to write something like this about Final Fantasy games for quite a long time. I was inspired by articles written by a guy named Pat (Pitchfork) for the website Socks Make People Sexy. These were all done a long time ago though and I wanted to make something similar, but in my own voice and from my own perspective. One of my favorite things he would do in these articles is do a rundown of the cast. So I plan on doing that with my retrospectives as well. Final Fantasy I doesn’t have a ton of plot important characters, but let’s look at what we have. These impressions are based on my most recent playthrough of the game.

My party: The Warriors of Light

You need to pick four characters for your journey through this game and unlike (most) later entries, your characters have no personality. You have to name your crew, pick from the six classes and kind of imagine how their personalities would be.

Chuck the Warrior/Knight. So both my party composition and a couple of their names come directly from an old webcomic called 8-Bit theater. I feel like the most recognizable gag for the Warrior in those comics was ‘sword-chucks’ which is a genius invention that works exactly as it sounds.

In this playthrough, Chuck was an absolute beast. He took 1 damage from most enemies and almost never died. In fact, I think he never did keel over until the final battle with Chaos. He almost single handedly carried me through the entire way. I have never been one for challenge runs because I am a giant baby, but I would wager simply not having a Warrior would make things really hard for most people. Truthfully, I think a party of three Warriors and a Red or White Mage would probably be more effective than my diverse and fun party of rapscallions. Hey though, it’s early, they were still figuring out the job system!

GP or HP? the Thief/Ninja. The second of my 8-bit theater references. This line has stuck with my for the years and I don’t know why. So it felt natural to name my Thief that. Unfortunately the Pixel Remaster decided to rename GP to ‘gil’ as that is the series standard so now my little thief’s name makes less sense. Ah well.

Despite being named a thief, you can’t actually steal anything in the original Final Fantasy. So what differentiates him from the king of DPS the Warrior is his speed. The Thief can dodge a lot of things and as a result, he didn’t really die all that much either. He wasn’t quite as invulnerable as the Warrior – the fight with Marilith/Kary/the fiend of fire was basically a Warrior solo effort at the end – but he was a very effective secondary damage dealer. He received a brief promotion during the battle with chaos to be every bit as important as the Warrior though. I gave him the most powerful weapon in the game, the masamune, and when he was hasted he would sometimes out damage Chuck. Wow!

Rich Evans, the Red Mage/Red Wizard. I am stupid. So when thinking of a name for my Red Mage, the first thing I thought of was another thing with the word red in it: Red Letter Media. And then I was like, well, you’d have to be a real asshole to hate Red Mages. So I chose the one RLM guy I thought you’d have to be an asshole to hate. Rich Evans.

For people unaware, the Red Mage is a jack of all trades. They can cast white and black magic. A healer and a damage dealer! On top of that, they are handy with a sword so they can do just a bit of everything. Unfortunately, I found Rich Evans to not really be good at much of anything. Casting black magic as a red mage is pointless. My Black Mage out-damaged Rich Evans by a lot. The physical damage he would cause was handy during random encounters, but against actual bosses he might as well have been swinging a twig. There Rich Evans was a heal bot and honestly I didn’t think cure or cura healed enough to be horribly useful. If I were to run again, I’d just use a white mage because I think the added hp on each heal would make a big difference. Plus they get holy which is canonically the coolest Final Fantasy spell.

Vivi, the Black Mage/Black Wizard Wow gee whiz I wonder why I named my Black Mage Vivi. In case you didn’t know, this is the Black Mage that appears in Final Fantasy IX and he pretty much just looks like a Black Mage. Unfortunately I forget that the Black Wizard looks like a completely different Final Fantasy character

Ah well. I’ll just pretend Sabin came in to replace Vivi halfway through and he learned black magic or something, I dunno.

In this playthrough, Vivi was pretty much my ‘oh my fucking god I don’t want to sit through this random battle, use Flare or something so we can move on’ character. In boss battles he was my second most valuable damage dealer, but he was also squishy enough that it felt like he would go down before I even knew it. But boy, casting Blizzaga once was great. Usually my strategy with him would be to cast haste on Chuck or Rich Evans and then cause whatever damage I can (In FF1 haste makes it so you hit someone more times on your turn, so it’s a damage buff. It doesn’t make you faster like it would in an ATB game). I like having a magic damage dealer in the party just because you run into those pesky slime-style enemies that take like four damage to sword strikes, but I didn’t run into THAT many of those and when I did Chuck or GP or HP? would usually score a crit and take care of things. I didn’t mention it above but the crit rate had to be upped by like 1000%, I got them all the time.

So basically in my next playthrough it’s KNIGHT KNIGHT KNIGHT and White Wizard. Speaking of White Wizard, I didn’t mention the other two classes: Black Belt/Monk and White Mage. I, uh, didn’t use them but I thought I would mention them. Masters, the evolved form of monk/black belts, are a more useless dps than the Ninja and White Mages/Wizards are healer first characters. There!

Princess Sarah

She is the princess of Cornelia/Corneria. Calling her a major character is a bit of a stretch, but the journey of the Warriors of Light technically starts with her kidnapping at the hands of Garland. Plus, she gets used in a lot of supplementary material later on. She gets a major role in World of Final Fantasy from what I remember. I included this specific screenshot because I have no idea what she’s trying to say here. Is she trying to say she wants to have some alone time with Chuck? Is the screen fixing to fade to black with her going “you’re so norty?”

Bahamut

For funsies I decided to compare Pixel Remaster Bahamut to other forms of Bahamut. On the left is NES Bahamut. Not quite intimidating, I would say Pixel Remaster Bahamut looks like Bahamut Zero in comparison. On the right is a version of Bahamut from the PSP version of Final Fantasy. I haven’t played that specific version but I included it because I just think that style really sucks compared to the more pixelated version.

Bahamut has one role in this game: to give your team a class change. It’s the one thing I would call a sidequest in the original Final Fantasy and it is so important that I almost hesitate to call it a sidequest. Changing your class makes your character exponentially more powerful. For challenge run fanatics, I’m sure using the starter classes is neat and all, but for people like me who cower at such things…you’re going to want to run around with a ninja instead of a thief.

He doesn’t have much of a character outside of this though. He’s just a kindly king of the dragons. I just thought it was neat that the most iconic summon in the franchise got his start in the very first game. A lot of series staples from Final Fantasy don’t originate with the first game, but this bad boy does.

Cid!?

The above screenshot is talking about the creation of the airship. Cute! Of course, this line of dialogue isn’t in the original game because it’s a little too on the nose. The tradition of Cid in numbered games wouldn’t start until 2, but this little throwaway line of dialogue that was added in the GBA remake of Final Fantasy tried to tie it all together. I don’t like this little bit of retroactive continuity but felt it was important to note that it’s in the most easily accessible version of the game. But it’s a lie! Ignore this NPC! Booo!

I didn’t know where to put this but I love the Troll

NES on the left, Pixel Remaster on the right. Look at this guy! You can practically hear him go “AIEEEEEEE YOU’VE RUINED MY LIFE IT’S OVER FOR ME AGGGGGGGGGGH” Plus I love the shadow on his crotch. This is a family game, you can’t just put troll penis everywhere all willy nilly.

The Four Fiends

Some more sprite comparisons for you. I really like the updated versions of these guys, I think they do a good job of capturing the spirit of the original designs. Upper Left: Lich (Earth). Upper Right: Marilith/Kary (Fire). Lower Left: Kraken (Water). Lower Right: Tiamat (Wind)

These guys are your main ‘boss’ enemies, they guard the four crystals. They snuffed the light out of them so to speak. They have no characterization at all, but they are the big bads of the game and even show up for rematches in the final dungeon. In this playthrough, I struggled the most with Marilith. She was unleashing fire attacks that would just obliterate my entire party, save for Chuck. I think he wound up winning the fight with about 40 HP left. I think these enemies are particularly effective in the Pixel Remaster because they represent a spike in difficulty. The game is a total cakewalk until you reach Lich. He has more HP and causes more damage than anything you have faced so far and, to me, represented the first serious threat of death. It’s a little unnerving seeing your number two DPS cause like 30 damage.

The fights you have against them at the end of the game are intense. A lot of end game enemies love using death against you. While you can guard yourself against that, it can still be a little frustrating to be smacked with it if you’re not ready. In the Pixel Remaster, this is lessened by the ability to save before each battle but in the NES version you really need to be on your game to make it out of the final dungeon alive.

Garland/Chaos

The first and final boss of Final Fantasy. It’s like poetry, it rhymes. He was once a loyal knight of Cornelia but became corrupted at some point and kidnapped Princess Sarah. It turns out the four fiends you defeated were Garland’s servants from 2000 years ago and sent him back to the past to heal after your party kicks his ass at the start of the game. When you defeat the four fiends, it opens a portal in the chaos shrine to that period of time so you can finish things. You then fight his true form Chaos. To learn more about Garland and Chaos, make sure to play the hit game “Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.” Are you a bad enough dude to take out Chaos!?

Chaos represents probably the harshest swing of difficulty in the Pixel Remaster. The game doesn’t present much of a challenge until this point. As I said, no game overs. Then you fight Chaos and all of a sudden the game remembers its NES roots. Chaos causes ~300 damage per attack – Vivi had 450-ish HP on my first attempt – and this gets boosted up to around 700 per hit if he casts haste on himself. On top of this, he can randomly cast curaja on himself to completely heal up. It’s frustrating causing thousands of damage only to see that 9,999 in green text. It’s a true endurance fight and definitely worthy of being the final boss of this game.

When I got to him, I believe my party had just hit level 50. This is the original level cap and it took a zillion years to hit it in the NES version, so I assumed I would just stroll up and win like I did with every other battle. Nope! Obliterated. Luckily I took advantage of the quicksave function the remaster added and after I got slaughtered about five times in a row I went back to grind. Finally, I was getting that authentic FF experience I spent a few paragraphs bitching about up there! I decided to give it a go after my characters hit level 57 and…I did better but I was still getting my ass kicked. Eventually though, I prevailed. I used an item to get Saber on Chuck and kept him hasted, I used an item to get blink (helps with evasion though if it did anything who can say) on GP or HP and I just prayed Vivi stayed alive long enough to cast Haste on everyone. I suck and didn’t realize I had temper and that temper could stack so that probably would have helped but hey. I won in the end. And only Vivi died! So I’ll take it.

I was just relieved he didn’t have another form. Hey it’s early, the form changes will come later I assure you.

It started here

With each Final Fantasy, I want to note when certain series traditions start. Sorry if some of these seem really obvious.

Four Fiends, Crystals, Warriors of Light, Jobs, turn based battles, the world map, random encounters and Nobuo Uematsu

This is the game that started it all, so of course it establishes the basics of the franchise. Felt it was important to list Uematsu here because he is the main composer for the franchise. He’s been here since day one!

These all get talked about in some way above, so I won’t dwell on it too much, but these things appear over and over again in the franchise. Jobs, called classes here, get several games in which they are more prevalent so I will save that discussion for a later day. The other elements pop up from time to time too, whether in the mainline series or in spinoffs. Final Fantasy IX, for example, lifts the four fiends and crystals wholesale for its endgame, which makes sense given that FFIX is sort of a ‘series celebration’ game.

Class changes

Hardly a Final Fantasy invention, but still something that I would consider a staple, especially in those job heavy games I mention above. When your character gets a class change, it feels like a significant moment and comes with a giant change in power. They don’t happen in every Final Fantasy title but you always remember when they do happen. Probably the most remembered example of this is Cecil’s transformation into a paladin in Final Fantasy IV.

Airships, boats, etc

Another little graphic comparison for you. On the left is the Pixel Remaster airship and on the right is the NES airship. I actually prefer the NES airship because it reminds me of one of those wacky flying inventions people would make. But this isn’t a bad take on it.

Final Fantasy is a game about exploring the world and one of the best ways to explore the world quickly is a vehicle! The first one you get in FFI is a ship and later you get an airship. This progression is consistent with the rest of the series because you don’t usually just get an airship, you receive various vehicles with various limitations. Sure everybody loves the Highwind in Final Fantasy VII, but you can’t get that without first experiencing the tiny bronco, the buggy and a chocobo.

Colored magic

Not exactly a Final Fantasy original, but this game establishes black magic as the damage dealing kind of magic and white magic as the healing sort of magic. Black magic has a lot more support options in this game than it typically does, so the distinction isn’t quite as stark as it would become. We do not get to experience the joys of blue magic just yet, but it will come whether you want it to or not.

Some beloved enemies

A couple of series staple enemies start here, though their designs aren’t quite familiar. Evil eye (I always call him Ahriman, even though I know that isn’t the species name), Black flans, Minotaurs, Goblins, Ochu, Elementals, Gigas, Giant Worms and probably many others that I can’t think of right now pop up here. No cactuar or tonberry though. You gotta earn those mascot enemies!

Super bosses…kinda

It’s not actually the hardest boss in the game, that’s chaos, but in the Flying Fortress you have the chance to randomly encounter an enemy called Warmech. This guy is stronger than most bosses and basically every random encounter in the game. It only appears on one floor though and you may not even encounter it unless you’re unlucky – so you either prepare for it and hunt it down like you would a typical super boss or you get unlucky and have to either run or die. It doesn’t have the difficulty of a super boss but I think the odd nature in which it is encountered makes it kind of close.

Ultimate weapons…kinda

The Excalibur is the second most powerful weapon in Final Fantasy I, behind the Masamune which can be found in the final dungeon. It is exclusive to the Warrior and you have to find an item called Adamantite in the Flying Fortress (where the Air crystal is) in order to have it made for you. Character specific ultimate weapons would go on to become a major staple of the franchise, so I thought this game having a class specific ultimate weapon was worth noting. The reason I say “kinda” in the header here is because I really feel like the ultimate weapon should be the strongest one.

In conclusion

So is this game worth playing? Yes. Ideally in the original format but if you don’t have the patience for that sort of thing, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to play the Pixel Remaster version of the game. I do think your experience with the game isn’t as authentic and you’re not experiencing the most ‘true’ version of the original Final Fantasy, but it’s at least closer to the real thing than other remakes. I would say start with the NES version and if you find yourself running into a brick wall early on, switch it up. At least you have an idea for how the original feels.

The original Final Fantasy is an old and hard to approach game and it only gets more so with age. But if you want to appreciate what the franchise would go on to become, if you want to understand just how far things have come, you should try.

Thank you very much for bearing with me and reading this far. Just like with the original Final Fantasy, I’ll be learning just what I want to make of these writeups as I do them. As I said up there somewhere, I have wanted to do a writeup of this series for a long time. At least a decade. So even giving me a couple of minutes of your time is appreciated.

Up Next

Final Fantasy 2, a notorious sequel.

[oepionie]

There are so many otome games out there (though the ones officially in English can be lacking sometimes), were you looking for a free to play mobile, free to play PC, or games for console and/or PC? Since otome games also are meant for niche audiences, their fandoms tend to be small to begin with…I know that Obey Me is currently popular with a big fandom, you might have heard of it. If you haven’t heard of it, it is fun but the game can’t be considered a traditional otome due to it not actually having any actual romance routes that you can pursue. Tears of Themis is another one with a sizable following (I haven’t played it, so I can’t vouch for it). I think the cybird mobile otome games have decent sized fandoms too? (I haven’t played those either). I’m not sure if they’re still available, or if their fandoms are even active anymore, but the Shall We Date?: Wizardess Heart, Shall We Date?: Guard Me, Sherlock! (there are Easter eggs from this game in Obey Me) and Shall We Date?: Love Tangle are all old classics.

As for PC otomes, I know that Cinderella Phenomenon is pretty popular (it’s free to play, though one of the routes is sus. you’ll know what I mean if you play it). The story for it is really good, in my opinion. For consoles, Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth is one that’s recommended a lot (very long common route, it also has an anime! Im still playing through my first route). I can’t really recommend any other console ones cuz all the ones I’ve known or played are rated M, sorry 😅 Some people have been suggesting The Arcana, which is an absolute masterpiece of a game, but that isn’t an otome, it’s a just a romance visual novel. Which has mature and suggestive scenes in all the routes at some point. Just so ya know, if you decided to check out The Arcana.

OMG TYSM!!! I've been wanting to get into otome games more<33 This was such a nice reccomendation list

[cosmicstarlatte]

Oommgggg okay okay. My number one is Mammon, tied for two is Satan and Beel with Lucifer coming in hot. My typical Bias is a mix of Mam and Satan (Anger issues but soft all overrrr)

OMG ANOTHER OL!!!! Bro omfgggg. I love COVE AHH!!! Yes! The Baxter DLC and Derek DLC is out. Wedding DLC has been out and there's even two spicy bonus moments with Cove on their patreon 👀👀👀

Ikesen thooo. Nobu was my favorite but we don't talk about his thing for feet BC that's not my thinggg. IkePri uhh Chev. I have a thing for the ones that want me dead at first bc I'm delulu and my brains like nah that didn't happen bc I'd be dead bc I'd fight back.

Mysme was okay for my HS self. I blew threw it and used guides. Zen is my anomaly I love himmm.

Cinderella Phenomenon tho?? It's so good tbh. It's definitely long in story telling but once you get locked onto a route of your choosing it's soooo good I love it.

TokyoRev involves time travel and gang themes. I got into it bc I thought the charas were adults but a huge chunk is like.. during their middle school years but they show them as adults years into the future so it's worth it for me. Painful but not as painful as Demon Slayer. Lawwwdd. I love Sanemi ❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️

Also dw we all a lil wild on main 🥴

-Angsty Anon

It's so hard not to love Mammon!! ♡ Actually I posted a little mammon drabble today! 😆 Satan is really cute (I finally got on that train w NB) & Beel & Lucifer have always been a part of the harem!♡ dude yes! I'm a sucker for anyone who's a little rough but actually soft (especially when its just for you 🥹!!)

Hehe I'll continue the rest here!!

THEY FINALLY HAVE BAXTER'S!?!?! OMG. I'm gonna have to treat myself and replay it! That dating sim SERIOUSLY left a lasting impression!!! Tbh, it might actually be the best one I've played? And that was just with Cove at the time too, insane! 😵‍💫 ...Spicy cove content you say?? 👀💕

Nobunaga had me going insane! He was so annoying but I *literally* squealed so many times playing his route & couldn't get enough of him! Dude yeah the puffy toes thing... LMFAOOOO. (But ngl...I like having my feet kissed. /recently discovered that)

Chev just likes to play hard to get, his type always come around, ignore the threats 😌

Dude even with guides I was like nah this game is asking for too much 😭

Tbh I don't mind long story telling! I'll have to check it out!

I def got gang vibes from Tokyo Rev but time travel!?!? I did NOT expect to read that lol! & partly middle schoolers!? Another shock! 😂 wow I really didn't know anything about it lol

ohh I like demon slayer! I still haven't watched the most recent season though! The last one I watched was the one with Tengen! I'm def a tengen & rengoku stan ♡

[variouspolltournaments]

Submissions for the Otome Heroines Tournament.

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

Submit an Otome Heroine, along with where they come from and (if you want) propaganda through ask or submit a post.

They must be from an actual otome game, otome isekai heroines do not count. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page here.

Top 6 submissions are the ones I submitted myself.

@tournament-announcer

Submissions in bold have propaganda, submissions not in bold do not have propaganda. Whether they do or do not have some already, you are still free to submit some.

All Tournaments can be found on my pinned post. There you can see the ones that have been completed, the ones that are currently running, the ones that are pending and the ones that have submissions open.

SUBMISSIONS:

Rin/Chihaya: Yoshiwara Higanbana

Angelique Limoges: Angelique

Chizuru Yukimura: Hakuouki

Lucette Riella Britton: Cinderella Phenomenon

Morgan Leone: Gilded Shadows

Mai Mizusaki: Ikemen Sengoku

Sian Goodin: Backstage Pass

Kayo: Ken Ga Kimi

Alice Liddell: Heart no Kuni no Alice

Teuta Bridges: Bustafellows

Julia Darwin: Shall we Date? Love Tangle+

Valerie Amaranth/Diamond Heart: Magical Warrior Diamond Heart

Hiyoko Tosaka: Hatoful Boyfriend

Nora Lewis: Changeling

Tifalia: Radiant Tale

Byakuya/Olympia: Olympia Soiree

Heroine: Amnesia

Kisa Tachibana: Jack Jeanne

Anastasia Lynzel: Even If Tempest

Ceres: Virche Evermore

Hiyori Sena: Charade Maniacs

Lynette Mirror/Cupid: Cupid Parasite

Kotone Awaki: Café Enchanté

Mei Ayazuki: Meiji Tokyo Renka

Luna: Love Spell: Written in the Stars

Cardia Beckford: Code: Realize

Yui Kusanagi: Kamigami no Asobi

Haruka Nanami: Uta no Prince-sama

Yurika Arisu: Taisho x Alice

Little Painter: Lovebrush Chronicles

Ichika Hoshino: Collar x Malice

Beniyuri: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly

Jed/Eiar: Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk

Liliana Adornato: Piofiore

Youran: Mr Love Queen's Choice

Iris: Moon Observatory Iris

Nanami Shiranui: Norn9

Koharu: Norn9

Mikoto Kuga: Norn9

Rinka: Bad Apple Wars

Rosa: Tears of Themis

Yui Komori: Diabolik Lovers

Hibari Tojo: Variable Barricade

Fuka: Ozmafia

Adami Adashino: Homicipher

Ciel: Moon Observatory Ciel

anholly: Moon Observatory Anholly

kate: Ikemen Villains

Emma/Belle: Ikemen Prince

Alice: Ikemen Revolution

Mitsuki: Ikemen Vampire

Chika: Ikemen Live

Enju Ueno: Nightshade

Akane Koizumi: Gakuen Club

JB: XOXO Droplets

Misa Isshiki: 9RIP

Ami Akashi: Him, the Smile & Bloom

Fuuka Haruyoshi: Him, the Smile & Bloom

Serina Aoki: Him, the Smile & Bloom

Miku Yukihira: Him, the Smile & Bloom

[hyperfixation-goes-brrr]

Shit I wanna do in 2025

(Yes, obviously, I know I'm probably not gonna be able to actually finish all of these, but I like to have Options(™️), so, if I end up gettin bored of somethin, I have like 50 other things I can do instead (I also feels like this'll actually make it easier for me, to finish at least like a few of them))

ACNH

Have ten villagers (5/10)

Anime

A Sign of Affection

Blue Exorcist

Bungo Stray Dogs

Dandandan

Delusional Monthly Magazine

Doctor Elise

Fluffy Paradise

I Was Reincarnated As the Seventh Prince

My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered

Naruto + Shippuden (at least finish Akatsuki Suppression Mission, which is around where I stopped the last time)

One Piece (at least just the East Blue Saga)

The Foolish Angel Dances With the Devil

The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash

The Witch and The Beast

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Tokyo Revengers

Undead Unluck

Villainess Level 99

Books

Read at least nine books (this is, technically, like one book a month, but, cause I do majority of my readin in uni, like between classes and stuff, I don't do a lot of it in the summer, so I'm just not includin those three months)

Finish rereadin The Raven Cycle (currently about like halfway-ish though The Dream Thieves)

Read the Dreamer trilogy

Finish readin The Murderbot Diaries (currently two books in)

Games I wanna finish/catch up with

Breath of the Wild

Infinity Nikki

Games I wanna (re)start

AFK Journey

Baldur's Gate 3

Cinderella Phenomenon

Colorful Stage

Dandelion - Wishes Brought to You

Fairy Tail

Honkai Impact

Obey Me

Solasta

Stardew Valley

Tears of Themis

Tower of Fantasy

Twisted Wonderland

Wuthering Waves

Genshin Impact

Finish buildin my main team (Sucrose, Diluc, Kaeya, and Noelle)

100% Mondstandt (90%)

Finish all of Mondstadt's reputation quests (16/22)

Fully level up Liyue's statue (7/10)

Klee's, Jean's, and Venti's story quests

The first four hangout events (so Bennett's, Chongyun's, Barbara's, and Noelle's)

The People of the Spring's and Children of the Echo's tribal chronicles

Honkai Star Rail

Finish the The Xianzhou Luofu chapter

MCU

What if...? (all 3 seasons)

Moon Knight

Thor: Love and Thunder

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Secret Invasion

Loki (season 2)

Echo

Agatha All Along

Zenless Zone Zero

Finish buildin Lycaon and Piper

Build Qingyi and Burnice

Other

Post at least like two more chapters of my fic

Actually sit my ass down, and listen to the whole entirety of Epic

Reread "The Ultimate Gathering of the DigiDestined" (for like the third or fourth time)

Get back to playin the piano

MasterList

[loosesodamarble]

the fictional men you mentioned are all so handsome can you tell where and what type of media are they from.

Aha... So I kinda forgot that this ask was in my inbox for a few days. But hey! Now I'm getting to it! Sorry to make you wait, Anon!

Hopefully, getting the answers you seek will satisfy you.

(For anyone who doesn't know what Anon is talking about, I made this post a few days back where I shared some of my favorite characters and explained their similarities.)

Now, onto the answers.

First off, are Nacht and Morgen Faust. The people who frequent my blog are most definitely already familiar with these two. They are my ultimate blorbos. Do not separate me from them. Anyways, they're from the manga and anime series Black Clover.

They're both introduced during the Spade Invasion arc so for any anime only-s out there, they don't get that much presence. In the manga though, oh boy is there stuff happening for those two!

.....

The lovely redhead I shared is Karma, from the dating sim Cinderella Phenomenon (and the fandisc Evermore).

I had so much fun when I played his route the first time. And OOOOHHHH! His story in the fandisc! And I think it's thanks to Karma that my love for weapon wielding love interests was solidified.

.....

The next (and only other) pair of characters from the same media are Saint Germain and Herlock Sholmés. They come from the dating sim Code Realize series (there's the original game "Guardian of Rebirth" along with two fandiscs, an anime adaptation, and a stage musical).

Their backstories are so tragic and I want only the best for them. The few moments when they're both on screen make me giddy, no joke. Also, I never thought I'd be into guys who wear top hats but then these two exist!

.....

The next character, Paschalia, is from the dating sim Radiant Tale (which had its fandisc [Radiant Tale Fanfare] released in English just this summer!).

I binged his route in one night and he's changed my brain chemistry~! I'm honestly putting off replaying his route for the good ending because I want to forget as much as possible and relive his story as fresh as I can.

.....

The next character I shared was Kageyuki Shiraishi, from the dating sim Collar x Malice.

He's such a funny little guy with his love of cats and inability to understand basic human decency. He's also very sad and his Tragic Love End has art that punched me in the gut, shook me down for cash, and then lovingly kissed me on the head before walking off.

.....

Lucas Proust from Virche Evermore: Error Salvation. (Also, not to brag but I pre-ordered the fandisc Epic Lycoris which I'm very much looking forward to this autumn.)

He literally gets done so dirty by the writers of the game. I want to fix his situation but I also want to see him continue to suffer because his misery is kinda beautiful.

.....

Blond #3 is the lovely Shion Mayuzumi from Variable Barricade.

Chronic kept man syndrome. Former model. Gaslighting king (I don't even know how much I'm exaggerating by saying that). Honestly, I want to indulge his laziness. He makes it so tempting...

.....

Bringing in style from the Kyoho era is Kinji from the game Winter's Wish: Spirits of Edo.

It's actually been a while since I've played Winter's Wish and Kinji's route specifically since I'm trying to complete, like, five games at once. But I do remember kicking my feet and giggling at the fluffy romance scenes.

.....

Next there's Orlok from the games Piofiore: Fated Memories and Piofiore: Episodio 1926.

He's such an adorable assassin! And he kills for the sake of the church he belongs to! Don't worry, he gets better. He's the love interest that gets Fuegoleon-ed in his good ending.

.....

And last but not least is Il Fado de Rie from Cafe Enchanté.

A literal angel of a man. So beautiful and divine and helpless and clueless. Also, very adorable that he has a love for dating sims while being a dating sim love interest.