#and this is still going on bc he physically can’t restrain himself from feeding the trolls

[gothicprep]

patrick tomlinson has to be the most tormented man alive, and I hate that I can’t crack jokes about it, because if someone asks me “who is that” I’m gonna need like 2 hours to explain all the lore

[zee-writes-and-draws]

Normal world AU where the different buildings are just random groups of people and all of them ended up moving to the small village near the supposedly ‘haunted’ mountain that Samon and Enki grew up on bc property values are low as shit, and all of the minors are adopted by the guards. Qi has basically just grabbed Upa and Liang and ran the hell away from the Chinese mafia. Samon sees this random man dragging two half-dead children with him and this is now the very first time any of the new residents of the village find out the ‘hauntings’ that lowered property values were just a teenage Enki post massive growth spurt and a very small and over-energetic Samon that haven’t been seen in well over a decade.

- Hajime has, unfortunately, agreed to look after Jyugo and Nico while Rock and Uno try to find legal jobs, but it’s a lot on him. He and Seitarou help Uno and Rock fight a case to get custody of the two minors. Yamato is helping Tsukumo get a restraining order against his former agent and various paparazzi, as well as going to therapy so he doesn’t constantly feel the need to put on a persona in front of others. Hajime is a teacher at the local school (since there’s a decent number of local kids and then the building children), Yamato is the school’s coach, and Seitarou sells uniforms/cute festival stuff but is also occasionally seen working with the age 7 and below kids because they’re all very small and nice.

- Kiji is trying to cure Honey of his anger management issues and Trois of his pyromaniac tendencies. His day job is making and testing makeup that everyone buys, like mascara and eyeliner and hair gel. His second in command is working in one of the other small shops, selling everyone clothes (he and Seitarou make the clothing together).

- Kenshirou is only here because some of his dogs are sick and this village has been weirdly good for their health. Along the way he lets Musashi and Hitoshi stay with him because they help on chores and the dogs love both of them very much. He helps with the local stray problem by opening a shelter and rehabilitating most of them (the few who can’t be fixed to near-perfect health are still loved and cared for). Hitoshi bakes lots of food and sells it at Shiro’s restaurant, which is also why his presence is appreciated. Musashi tutors online part-time after Mitsuru rigged up wifi for them. Between all three of their jobs they can afford a place that’s small but has four tiny rooms so each person can a private space. (They sleep in the living room that’s been transformed into the group bedroom).

- Mitsuru is considered the local nuisance in so many ways, but after all of his loudspeakers and amplifiers have been confiscated he’s forced to resort back to regular hand-made instruments, so he at least gets to learn something entertaining as he irritates everyone with his noise-making. He and Momoko live in the same house but there’s a line drawn on the inside and outside that splits the house in half so everyone realizes in all of ten seconds they’re not actually together together, just saving on rent as long-term friends. Momoko works on managing the more official stuff to keep the town from being erased. She’s the unofficial (until the next election of course) mayor of the town at this point. Mitsuru’s day job is rigging up stuff like wifi and helping Hajime with his shop class at the high school.

- Shiro moved here after hearing how wonderful the cuisine is. He approves of being able to gather fresh ingredients on the mountain. Rock is frequently seen at his restaurant, both as a customer and as a worker. Hitoshi was recruited within a week. (Hajime has some mixed feelings but Rock mostly stops acting like an idiot after the first day, so it works out well)

- Inori and Ruka moved here years ago (and dragged the Daisen brothers with them) and are pretty much the only residents who were here before everyone started moving out and the buildings moved in. They’re the only ones initially who know the story behind the hauntings and never shared it out of indifference. Inori works in construction of new buildings/clearing rubble from the old, the Daisen trio help train the different sports teams at the school, and Ruka technically co-owns the makeup business with Kiji but his preferred job is as an unofficial swimming instructor because the two of them don’t get along.

- Samon and Enki bring the village supplies and materials from the mountain and trade this way. Samon has a notable weakness for ice pops, popsicles, and zakuro shaved ice, which he gets to surprise Enki on days it seems like he might want it. The new residents are all pleasantly surprised by how sweet Noriko is. Shiro offers her a job after trying some of her desserts. She bakes on weekends and holidays only to avoid overexerting herself, but the rest of the time her jobs include checking people in, taking orders to Shiro and Rock, and keeping peace if someone starts arguments. Houzuki is the area acupuncture specialist and medic until the Otogi family moves in, but he switches to full time acupuncture and massage therapy after they take up the practice. (they’re better than him at medicine anyways and he’s ok with admitting it).

- Liang and Upa love training on the mountain. Rock joins them frequently, often chatting with Liang as they race up. Qi is marginally less interested in physical activity, but he’s willing to make the hike up with them because of the amazing plant both during the hike and at the arrival itself. In the long run, doing some exercise in this form helps him with his mental health a lot and makes him happier. Tsukumo joins occasionally and talking to Qi helps him gradually come out of his shell.

- Trois takes to the challenge of trying to be constructive in building things instead of weapons and explosives. The downside is he frequently teams up with Mitsuru (who has the most equipment necessary) and therefore there are unique ways of getting around the idea of non-destructive inventions. Honey figures out ways to get Mitsuru his speakers back on the condition that he can use the wiring for his capsules.

- Nico ends up really sad about the lack of wifi so he tries to work with Mitsuru to improve tech, but he’s got a hard time reading the manuals so now Musashi, accompanied by either Uno or Trois depending on the day, can be seen teaching Nico how to read instruction manuals.

- Yamato is still very proud of his Japanese heritage, but he also frequently encourages others to appreciate the culture they live in and the culture they came from. Thanks to him, there’s a small festival hosted each year where everyone brings something like food or games or clothing from their culture and share it with everyone.

- Kiji takes it as a personal challenge to help teach normal world culture to at least one of the Gokuu brothers. Enki is far less willing to go along with the idea that he needs help from someone, so it’s Samon. Inori, who had a similar idea for the last eleven years, is currently trying to teach Samon how to drive. It’s yielding mixed results, but he takes really well to motorbikes. Hajme and Samon have a brief ceasefire whenever the subject of motorcycles comes up.

- No one is allowed to bring up the time that Hajime got lost in the mountain. No  one.

- Kuu comes and goes as he pleases. Mostly he stays at Hajime’s house but sometimes he’ll somehow appear wherever Samon Enki and Noriko are presently staying and lies down in the lap of whoever is trying to meditate. Enki tries to ignore Kuu (and fails), Samon will give him small scritches and complain about Hajime in a quiet tone, and Noriko feeds and pets him.

- In their spare time, many of the adults critique the prison systems they rescued the others from. Kiji, Hajime, and Kenshirou work with Enki to fix things on a bureactraic level, frequently accompanied by Momoko when she isn’t a sole representative in front of various international governments. Hajime knows the prison model perfectly, Kenshirou understands the police aspect that ties into it, and Kiji has several decades of experience serving as a prison guard, and their combined knowledge leads to many of their proposals being pushed pretty far up the ranks. 

- Samon is working on fixing prisons on the level of how each inmate is treated. All the official and formal changes in the world don’t change that there’s also issues with inmates not receiving care, sufficient entertainment, decent things for purchase and not just whether or not they can afford them, all sorts of stuff that slips past the cracks in the paperwork. He’s also the one who’s pushing for  more rehabilitation programs with Kiji and Mitsuru’s help. Between Samon’s knowledge of physical needs of people, Kiji’s balanced addition of general knowledge of what kind of education and paperwork prisoners need for proper rehabilitation to stick, and Mitsuru’s experience in communication, they have a very solid structure. Mitsuru’s ability to middleman and talk to Momoko also helps push their ideas forward.

- Slowly the buildings become more friendly towards one another. Upa smiles more because Nico helped him get out of his shell, there is a photo of Tsukumo laughing as himself for the first time hanging on the wall of Shiro’s restaurant, and Kenshirou’s dogs all adopted different humans to befriend and bond with. Qi gradually gets over his fear of dogs thanks to Musashi and ends up adopting one who works as a service dog for him and keeps him away from panic attacks and self-harming attempts, as well as (gradually) learning how to tell what kind of health Upa and Liang are presently in and alerting the doctor if necessary.

- The time-honored tradition of feuds between the different non-inmates and adults in charge of them continues, but they added in some new competitions. There are now options for multi-building tug-of-war, kids vs adults (and variations) relays, one v one competitions, and general tomfuckery. Most of the time Momoko is the referee, Mitsuru commentates, and although they rarely join in, they tend to tag-team and secure a near-effortless victory. If it’s every person for themselves, Momoko wins unless distracted by Hajime, at which point the rule of funny is frequently used to determine a victor.

[moviegroovies]

okay so one of my points in the original incoherent longpost ramble i wrote while fending off the the post-lost boys haze that overtook me after watching it for, i believe, the fifth time, was that i thought the reason it was such a good movie was how quickly it checked the “oh, i like these characters and want to think about them now that the movie is over” box. in that post, i then proceeded to not talk about the thoughts i’ve actually been having about these characters at all, so let’s get down to work and try to fix that, shall we?

okay i was going to just write another impossible to read multiple paragraph long post, but y’know, how about i make things easier on all of us and do this in bullet points. so, in no particular order..... headcanons!

despite her later desire to get out of the gang, star wasn’t tricked or pressured into becoming a vampire like michael was. rather, she had been hanging around them for long enough that she pieced together what they were and asked to join, only coming to realize that it would mean killing other people for her own continued survival and wanting out later on.

in the 6-issue lost boys comic, it’s implied that star has cystic fibrosis, informing her decision to become a vampire. i’m definitely not taking all of that comic into my own personal canon, but i stand by that part--esp. bc it fits with vampirism being her decision, even if it was one she later regretted. 

marko is the smallest of the lost boys, but also the most dangerous, even exceeding david. have you seen that part where he’s peeling a man’s head like a fruit? that bitch is BLOODTHIRSTY.

not that he’s exactly an upstanding citizen on his own, but a good deal of the reason that david abuses exercises his control over the other boys is that he knows that they (but marko in particular) are always just about ten minutes and one show of weakness on his end away from staging a coup, and he knows that with anyone else in charge (save maybe dwayne, but dwayne isn’t interested in the leadership role) the group would become too violent and draw too much attention, getting them all killed.

okay now i feel like i’m vilifying marko which. i definitely stand by what i’ve said, but i also don’t think he’s like, pure evil or anything by any means. i like marko! 

i feel like i owe marko some nice headcanons now so like: i agree with the general consensus that marko cares for the pigeons in the vampire hotel, to the point where he feeds them and maybe talks to them. he DEFINITELY has named them all, although honestly he can’t tell them apart that well so usually when he sees one and calls it a specific name, he’s fucking with everyone else. loves to make fun of the other guys for not knowing which one is which, though.

one day he looks at a bird flying into the cave and casually announces “hey, vlad’s back,” and after hardly a glance, michael deadpans “vlad? that’s lestat.” 

marko goes into existential crisis mode for a week. this is the first time he starts to respect david’s decision to make michael one of them. 

he never figures out if michael was just fucking with him the way everyone else or if he could really tell the difference between the pigeons and it haunts him to this day.

ok wow that was a LOT of marko

back to star: she’s trans. you know that part on the boardwalk where she and michael are introducing themselves to one another for the first time, and michael goes “oh, your parents too, huh,” when she says her name is star? i always felt like she didn’t really get what he was saying, even after michael elaborated and told her he meant that her parents were ex-hippies. now i’m totally choosing to read that as her being like, a little offended that he thought someone would only be named star because they were burdened with it by uncool ex-hippie parents, because honestly when she picked it she thought she had the coolest name of all time. 

i will not take constructive criticism on that last part because it is already perfect.

on the subject of star, the general consensus i’ve seen in fic and stuff is that she had been a vampire for a few months or maybe a year before the events of the movie, but honestly i’d disagree.

personally, i feel like she’s been there for a lot longer than that--like, have you seen how she dresses? that immediately pinged “free spirit hippie girl” to me, which was kind of out of place, especially considering that everyone else dressed so 80′s. imo, star might have been turned as early as the start of the 70′s--making her the ex-hippie, and not her parents, like michael assumed. this fic here (which is SO good, by the way) explains the way that she was able to last a year with the hunger while michael was already struggling after about a week by having star steal sips from david’s bottle to tide her hunger when she could. that’s basically the way i see it, too, tbh, except over a longer time scale--rather than one year, something around 15. 

which means star is nearly as old as michael’s mother. oops.

alright, it’s weird, but i don’t actually think it’s that weird. the way i’m choosing to see vampirism in this universe is that it permanently halts the emotional maturity of the vampire at whatever age they get turned; david and the guys are nearly grown, at ages like, 18-22 or so, but not quite, and they’re never going to grow up and out of their immature mindset. the worst is for laddie, who’s permanently stunted around 8 years old. the others respond to this with a certain degree of pity, but since he doesn’t actually know what he’s missing, it mostly translates to a really rabid older brother/sister instinct. heaven help anyone who tries to pick on that kid--they’re immediately going to face 5 angry vampire dudes and one absolutely enraged vampire chick. 

(not to mention that his emotional immaturity means he’s got no real self control over the hunger he feels... if he ever snaps and becomes a full vampire, he’ll be the most dangerous of the group for a plethora of reasons)

on that note, if i were to list the lost boys by most control over their urges to least (or, y’know, least to most actively bloodthirsty), i think it’d be something like this: michael -> david -> star -> dwayne -> marko -> paul -> laddie, with the caveat that while marko is technically better at controlling himself than paul, paul has more moral reservations about the actual act of violent murder, while marko is more inclined to kill for fun. 

david being so high on that list may be a point of contention for some but tbh i feel pretty strongly about it

a majority of that call for me comes from the unmade screenplay for the lost boys: the beginning, a prequel to the film set in 1906. before reading that, i honestly had different headcanons entirely, and a lot less sympathy for david, but if you take the script as canon, i think a lot of things change about his characterization.

in the script, the four main lost boys are together (plus one other member named jasper, which is the only crossover name between the lost boys and twilight) as a petty gang before they became vampires. the start of the movie sees them pickpocketing to try and pay for a place to sleep that night, and david seems to luck out early, lifting a wallet with a $100 bill inside. 

however, when he realizes the guy has a family, including two babies, and he just took everything the guy has, he gives the wallet back, to marko’s intense dismay. 

basically, david starts out a criminal, and he definitely does care about self preservation above most other things, but he still has morals. later, when the movie’s big bad is pressuring him and the others to drink blood and live eternally, he’s the only one who refuses, spitting out the wine when he’s forced to drink it and showing the others that it’s blood. notably, even before that he’s warning his friends that they don’t have to drink it if they didn’t want to (mirroring the way that star told michael he didn’t have to drink of the bottle), protecting not just himself, but also them. he resists becoming a vampire the longest, too; david refuses to join the movie’s villain, even after the other lost boys have been turned, right up until he’s shot by some military men in a scuffle and it’s a matter of life and death. then, his self preservation wins out, but even once he’s been turned, david doesn’t lose who he used to be. 

tl; dr: i feel like david is a better person than the events of the movie alone would have you think.

in my opinion, he’s been looking out for his friends from the very beginning, and he’s never stopped doing that. yeah, even before he turned, he was a crook and kind of a burnout, but he had morals. i’m not going to deny that david enjoys being a vampire--enjoys drinking blood, the physical rush, the power over people who pushed him around--not by any means. i just think that comes from an understandable place, given that he was a streetrat who got pushed around a lot in the events of that script; he likes that he’ll never be a victim to assholes with knives who are bigger than he is again. 

plus, if you look at the people the lost boys kill over the course of the movie, they’re not exactly innocent victims. there’s the asshole cop who restrained david with a baton to his throat for pretty much just the act of putting his hand on a dude’s face, a jerkass who starts fights on boardwalks, steals comic books, and ignores his girlfriend’s protestations in the car when he’s trying to make out with her, the girlfriend, who stuck by him while all that shit was going down (and was reading one of the stolen comics, if i interpreted that scene correctly--not that this means she necessarily deserved to die, but she wasn’t innocent), and a bunch of assholes calling themselves surf nazis. david and his gang only go after people who have started the fight themselves in some way or another, and i think that david is a big part in keeping it that way--he’s the one who deescalates the tension on the carousel to keep things from an all out bloodbath, after all, and was the one keeping the gang in check since the turn of the century from doing anything too unforgivable for their own gain. that to me says he’s got a pretty good grasp of self control, and he keeps the gang to a level of violence that sustains their bloodlust without being totally gratuitous as much as possible.

re: his placement on the sliding scale of vampiric self control, you might be wondering why i put michael at the absolute top. honestly, it’s not that i think he’s a saint or anything. i just think he was the one member of the gang (jury’s out on laddie, but he’s automatically at the bottom because of his age and inability to control himself) who didn’t make a conscious choice, one way or another, to become a vampire. marko, dwayne, and paul gave into the temptation of the prequel’s big bad. david and star were given the choice between vampirism and death, and chose to live. michael, though--michael gave into peer pressure, but the worst crime he committed was drinking some wine. watching the others kill absolutely fucked him up, but he was able to resist any kind of bloodlust that might have had him joining in the slaughter on the beach that night. when pushed to the absolute wall by david in the ending of the movie (an ending you might have noticed i’m completely ignoring in favor of a full gang inc. laddie, star, and michael for my headcanons lol), his strength was tested against david’s and he won. michael isn’t perfect or superhuman, but he’s making the choices an essentially good, normal human being would make, and when everyone around him for one reason or another chose what they have, he’s got that tiny bit of a head’s up on them that makes all the difference. 

tbh tho, i think david was right when he said there was something of a killer in michael. i think on some gruesome level he’s kind of fascinated with the vampirism he’s fallen in with, which makes him more susceptible than, say, sam, or really any of the other emersons, who would rank above him on that scale, were they vampires too.

paul to me is just a fun happy dude. i was endeared to him when he clapped michael on the back after he drank and announced, totally earnestly, “you’re one of us!” i just, you know, liked his eagerness to welcome in a new friend. tbh i think he’s a bit of a ditzy airhead (or, dare i say it, a himbo), but he’s ultimately got his heart in the right place.

i really like dwayne. i like that he’s the quietest of the group (i saw a headcanon that said he didn’t speak that much because he’s got a stutter he’s embarrassed of, which i have absorbed into my canon), but i especially like that he does speak--to laddie, telling him what’s going on when he’s riding on the back of his bike. other than star, i think dwayne’s the most protective of him, and probably the most “maternal” of the guys. he’s under star in the sliding scale thing because to me he doesn’t really have qualms with killing assholes to survive, but at the same time, he’s never really tempted to take more than he needs, like marko is. 

i like the idea that dwayne’s really into music, like, ‘can name the artist, album, and song title of any song made since 1890 from the first line’ into music. immortality is a hell of a thing for music buffery. 

ok i have sooooooooo much more i want to say, i didn’t even realize i’d put together this many thoughts about this movie but Apparently I Have, holy god, but i need to cut off this post at some point sgfdshgh

one more fun marko one: totally love the hc that he paints, especially that he paints murals on the cave wall. artist boy.....

<3

[the-cryptographer]

I’m actually replaying Tales of the Abyss now instead of just thinking about replaying it as I become randomly taken over by Dist-related feelings. So under the cut is my experience with the first third of the game (everything up to the haircut).

- Imma just start with the character stuff and then move onto the gameplay stuff bc nobody cares about gameplay.

- Yeah, I started playing this like - “I wonder if I’ll still like the same shitty ships I liked when I was playing this ten years ago.” And the answer is FUCKING YES - they are apparently permanently ingrained in my psyche.

- On the subject of Luke... I didn’t actually remember how much of a douche he is for the first third of the game, since it’s been a while and I’m more accustomed to seeing portrayals of the better rounded and kinder character he eventually became. I’m going to say, I’m really glad he grew out of it on both a narrative and personal level, but I also really did enjoy and love long-hair douchey Luke. He’s insufferable and I adore him.

- That being said, I think this kind of puts an interesting spin on Luke/Tear. I do genuinely like this ship and am happy with where it ended up, but a lot of what seems to keep their early interactions from going even more poorly than they do is that Luke is... very used to bossing people around. And Tear is very used to being bossed around. Like, she’ll obviously talk back to him, but even so- Tear kind of falling into this servile protective bodyguard role is kind of what ends up endearing her to Luke and it’s kind of bad and good at the same time. Especially combined with things like her thinking the Baticul maid outfit his servants wear is cute... This idea could be taken places... I’m glad the relationship didn’t stay like this in the larger context of things, but I’m also kind of enjoying where it’s at so~

- That being said I feel like the party starts making lovebird jokes way too early. Like, I like this ship a lot, but I also have bad taste, and this isn’t the kind of thing I feel should be encouraged irl/in-universe. Not as their relationship exists during this part of the game, at least. ubb.

- More generally I do like Tear a lot tho. I think having her be a bit more serious and stoic and emotionally withdrawn are things that speak a lot to me, with regards to female characters and heroines especially. I also like that she is genuinely competent as a fighter and protector. And that the more traditional damsel role is occupied by a man, Ion.

- I’m also surprised that Tear’s boobs are as modestly proportioned as they are. Maybe it’s because of doujin content, or a couple of tactless jokes later on in the game(?) but I always thought they were HUGE instead of, well, buxom and hourglassy in the vein that you might find on a real woman. This game in general isn’t super fanservice-y in its character designs (although there’s something to be said about a few of the scenarios). There’s some Zettai Ryouki on the girls, but that’s about it. I guess the fact that this game's age is showing.

- The different iterations of ships involving Anise, Arietta, and the Ions are also something that are still appealing to me a lot. Part of me feels bad for being okay with Anise/Florian, since Florian’s a kind of an obvious replacement character. But then I start thinking about how conflicting and upsetting it would be for Anise and then - whoops - I’m interested again.

- Luke and Ion crush on each other so hard though. This was not a ship from when I first played but, god, it’s so cute how much Ion seems to genuinely like Luke, and how Luke gets so tsun and blushy about protecting him. Excuse me while I try and figure out a way to write this that isn’t heartbreaking, and fail.

- me: I wonder if I’ll like Jade as much as I did the first time. Since I seem to have come to a realisation that he’s an emotionally manipulative asshole with a very limited capacity for empathy on any non-abstract level. Jade’s disembodied voice *hasn’t even shown up on screen yet* : Move out of the way or it’s not my problem if you get run over by this tank I’m driving. me: I was a complete fool. He’s a total asshole and I love him so much.

- Naw, yeah, for real tho: one of the first things Jade does upon meeting Natalia is try and establish that she’ll be easy to emotionally manipulate and control. He rather easily brushes over watching the suffering of others in favour of more goal oriented behavior. That, in addition to what happens when he extracts information from Dist at the Keterburg Hotel... I don’t really think I was off the mark about Jade potentially negging his boyfriend or exacting physical torture on his ex, especially insofar as his ex is a criminal anyhow. Like, obviously Jade has some kind of moral code by the time the game begins. And overall I think it’s admirable that he’s concerned about things like minimising the world’s death toll and human suffering. But he’s certainly not above breaking a few eggs to make and omelette, even if those eggs include visiting long-term physical and psychological damage on others. I would... hope that he could restrain himself from taking that kind of route with things. But I don’t think I’m exactly wrong in thinking he’s not a person I would trust not to, and thus not someone I’d want to invite within a mile of my personal life. Although he’s probably going to continue being a character I really cherish. He might still be my favourite playable character in the game - although Tear and Anise come close.

- Actual favourite character is Dist, of course. I mean, he’s hammy and awful and terribly written, but I love him so much. ‘Everyone is jealous of my intelligence and beauty.’ (Which is even funnier considering the post-battle dialogue where Anise and Jade tell Luke to write about their beauty and intelligence respectively in his diary. Birds of a feather.) idk, it’s just really strange, because I don’t really like when fanon iterations of characters are made more femme and flamboyant than they are in canon. But you have actual femme and flamboyant men in canon (Dist, Wallace from pkmn, etc) and somehow I love them so much, omg. (Dist also has a lot of grief stuff I like tho - v relatable with regards to Nebilim.) idk, I just count my lucky stars every day. Because five of the six God Generals die in this game, so the odds were definitely not in my favour, but somehow my favourite is the one that makes it out alive?! I’m dying at how blessed I am. Dist is basically the opposite of the Bury Your Gays trope, and I love it.

- On that note, when Jade and Dist are snarking and Luke and Guy share the look(tm) and are like ‘they’re off in their own little world’ asdfghjkl;

- me: I wonder if I’ll like Natalia more this time. Since I’m more aware now of the baggage and misogyny that goes into female character creation, and am more likely to blame authors than the characters themselves. Natalia: *to Luke, after taking one look at Tear* Are you fucking the servant girl? me: YIKES(tm)

- Naw, she’s okay. I mean... she’s not less okay than Anise or Tear, really, in terms of poor (stereotypical) writing and poor (catty) behaviour. I certainly think her commitment to being a kind ruler and acting towards the public good with her own hands and own feet is quite touching. But she appeals to me the least out of the three girls on a personal level. And, also, I think there are several issues with her introduction-

- Well... first off, that we hear about Natalia from Luke and Guy earlier in the game - and we’re told she’s high maintenance and clingy before we’ve even met her. And then we meet her and her introduction ends up immediately corroborating what Luke says about her. So... it’s a very bad first impression in a way. In general it’s kind of interesting seeing how the narrative feeds out information, now that I know all the characters and all the twists. Some of it is info-dumpy, and some of it is unintuitive, but it’s interesting to watch how it drops out hints and evidence for you to try and piece together before the reveals come.

- But I digress, the other thing is Natalia is, after her disastrous first impression, set up as a foil for Luke. Her kindness and selfless concern for others, and how seriously she takes her responsibility as a state leader, are both immediately cast against Luke’s self-absorption. Which... is in some ways ineffective for me tbh.

- Idk, just, like- An adult man spends seven years building up trust with a child that’s been isolated and emotionally neglected by design, and then manipulates and uses him as part of a murderous rampage. (two children, if we’re including Ion) And somehow this is Luke’s fault? Yeah, I don’t... buy that.

- I mean, Luke is obviously rude, callous, selfish, and arrogant. And I think all of those things are problems. All of those things are Luke’s fault and responsibility. I do think it’s upsetting that Luke is more concerned with dodging blame regarding Akzeriuth than he is concerned about... everyone who just died. And I’m certainly glad that Luke makes a decision to change. But... none of those things are really related to him feeling he can trust Van, and it’s pretty monstrously unfair to blame him for being manipulated by the only adult he really felt took his interests and concerns seriously as a kid. (I mean, obviously his parents love him, and he them. But there’s also a definite feeling that his concerns are not being prioritised by them. And that he can’t even advocate his concerns with regards to his mother, whose emotional and physical health could be endanger if Luke burdened her with his upsets.) As the player, we don’t really have a reason to trust Luke, and Luke’s loyalty to Van, more than Tear’s (and the rest of the party’s) distrust of her brother. We’ve known Luke and Tear approximately the same amount of time. But... Luke has known Van for seven years. And Luke has known Tear and Jade and Anise for a couple of weeks and has little reason to trust them. Tear spirited him away from the safety of his manor and into a dangerous world. Jade and Anise had him restrained and arrested and made no secret they were using his status for their political goals (good goals, but still...) They’re all openly disparaging of Luke. It seems pretty natural that Luke would trust Van over them, and the fact that Van was counting on that when he betrayed Luke and everyone... I mean... I also don’t blame the rest of the party for blaming Luke in the heat of the moment, but I think the game and narrative itself takes the ‘it’s your fault’ stuff a bit too seriously and uncritically. It’s also super obvious that they ramped up Luke’s unlikable qualities in preparation for what happens at Akzeriuth - pride cometh before the fall. And, even if it’s emotionally effective, it still don’t really go from point A to point B that being selfish and rude and arrogant makes you at fault for being susceptible to emotional manipulation. Which is kind of frustrating.

- Also, yeah, zol was right. You could’ve saved that kid with stalagmite or smthn, Jade.

- There’s a lot of weird bullshit along the lines of gameplay vs plot dissonance. Like trying to light barrels of oil on fire in the Abandoned Factory. I’m surprised none of them blew up in Luke’s face. Did nobody think to bring a candle? Or just have Mieu light up the dark with fire near the switch? That would have been a lot more expedient and a lot less dangerous.

- Ion: The seventh fonon was recently discovered. Jade: And thirty years ago, when I was a young lad, I was upset I couldn’t use the seventh fonon and blew up my teacher by mistake (whoopsie). me: what the flippity fuck, Ion? that’s not recent. I thought you were supposed to be better than Luke about this shit. What could possibly be responsible for this mistake - OH!

- In general, since Ion’s four years old and somehow knows a shitton about the world, it kind of takes some of the wind out of Luke’s sails when he’s had a three year lead on Ion ‘but i had more important stuff to learn, like my parent’s faces’. Luke’s amnesia and subsequent isolation are pretty well integrated into the story for the most part, but parts of it are obviously exaggerated for the sake of having a character that needs the relevant info about the game world infodumped on them.

- Mieu... is a thing. I don’t really like mascot characters as a concept in general. But I think some authors, like CLAMP, have done a good job integrating them into their stories. I can’t really say the same for Mieu though. That he kind of is Luke’s chew toy for the beginning part of the story is interesting. And that he fucked things over for his people and the Ligers due to this random accident (much like Luke) is kind of interesting. But... overall he’s just a very annoying cute thing that’s following you around for no reason. I wonder if his voice is less grating in Japanese, but the PS2 version of this game at least didn’t come with JP audio, which was kind of a bummer. I like the dub for the most part (Anise especially is really good) but I would have liked to hear the JP version this time.

- I think I still prefer platonic Guy/Luke to romantic Guy/Luke. (Although I don’t dislike it, the way I dislike Asch/Luke) but I am super charmed by the drama with Guy having all this resentment towards Asch that then becomes easier to move past once Asch gets switched out for Luke. Like, I think in some ways it’s more about Guy being in a different place looking after this helpless newly replicated Luke at age 14 compared to looking after the better-realised Asch when he was younger, rather than because of a stark difference between Luke and Asch themselves. But I can’t help but love Guy a little for seeing them so differently and feeling certain that Luke is the one that’s his friend. It’s really sweet and cute x’)

- And last thing - the hyperresonance stuff was super poorly explained. Particularly the first one between Luke and Tear. We’re told that this is something that can randomly happen when two seventh fonists interact, and Tear’s like ‘i should have been more careful’ like this is something that happens periodically that you can predict and avoid. but... how? What are the conditions that lead to this? Is this scientifically replicatable at all? Or is it something that can happen completely at random whenever Luke and Tear touch each other? Whenever Natalia and Asch touch each other? they’re just going to be having sex one day and randomly teleport out into an open field or smthn. This is so dumb. Except I know that the teleportation thing was actually 100% convenient plot bullshit, so I shouldn’t even pretend it can be made sense of in any real way, smh.

- New Game Plus! I debated quite a bit, but in the end EXP x10 was the only thing I purchased from the grade shop. I wanted to have the experience of gathering all the items and bonuses myself, since I forgot what happened the first playthrough. But I’m regretting the decision a bit now since I did all the sidequests and ultimate weapons and stuff the first time around and had a very full inventory, and I’ve already missed at least one thing on my current playthrough when a combination of not saving and forgetting how to walk lost me Barrelow X’s Capacity Core. (Not saving also made me not have a save to go back to to win against Asch at Yulia City- boo) But, regardless, even without all the other perks, I figured EXP x10 would basically mean breezing through the story, which was what in theory I wanted. But then I decided to combine this with the Unknown Difficulty Mode (enemy stats x3.5) which effectively made the game even more slow than the first runthrough, EXP x10 be damned. I spent a lot of the first part of the game crowding around Engeve, frantically trying not to die before I gathered 100 gald to stay at the Inn. I was completely outmatched on the Tartarus when it gets overrun with Griffins and Ligers. And I made about a dozen trips between the Fubras River and Engeve before I finally made it to Arietta without my characters dying. After getting my party to level 40, spamming Mystic Cage, and still getting absolutely crushed by Arietta at Coral Castle, I finally gave up. I lowered it down to Very Hard mode instead and defeated her in two minutes. After a quick search, I learned that this is considered one of the hardest battles with the hard mode stat multipliers, and it gets easier from there. So I technically could have kept going to level 50 or smthn but... it also seemed like a lot of these people were doing this challenge with the capacity cores and equipment rollover, and without them I’d most certainly have to grind more (and grind without good capacity core stat bonuses). And the simple truth of the matter is I wasn’t having fun anymore. So... if I do a third playthrough in another ten years, I’ll rollover everything properly to do Unknown properly, but in the meantime I’ll stick to whatever mode lets me farm grade the most easily.

- On that note, it became very clear that the defense stat in this game is very broken. All the characters (including your own characters, pretty much regardless of level) have /lots of HP/ and are meant to take /a lot/ of small hits - this is just the play style. So, as long as you have full TP and a way to heal, taking on characters with multiple times their usual attack and HP stats is doable. On the other hand, characters with high defense, like Arietta, Golems, etc... Even small differences between your attack stats and the opponent’s defense stats can result in your own attacks doing half/quarter/tenth of their usual damage, which means a battle taking two/four/ten times longer than usual (and you’re way more likely to run out of TP and healing items this way). I think this essentially means that high fonic/phys attack (respective of whether the character has a mage vs melee move set) are the most important stats for the player character. It would be cool if you could replicate Arietta’s defense effect with your own characters but... the truth is the bosses in these types of games are built very differently than the player characters (unlike something like pkmn)... so I’m not sure you can(?)

- Pet peeves currently include the Tales Of series’s multi-part cutscenes. It’s started already and I know it will get worse (i distinctly recall latter parts of this game where I had to fly between characters in different cities collecting cutscenes before I could move onto the next dungeon) But, yeah- I’m at a bit of a loss here because, while I like open exploration game worlds where you walk between different locations and vastly prefer this to games that teleport you between battle stages (ie Sonic Adventure 2, Disgaea) there is a lot of retreading old pathways in Abyss (as there was in Legendia) trying to negotiate between different talking heads. Like... I saved my game going up the tower at Coral Castle, intending to walk into a boss fight. And then a cutscene happened, during which I was teleported three loadscreens back in the direction I came from for another cutscene. And then I had to manually walk back the same exact route and save again, before another cutscene and finally the battle. What’s the rationale behind not just making that one big pre-battle cutscene with the travel included/implied? Maybe the fact that they DON’T HAVE A CUTSCENE/SKIT SKIP BUTTON which is another pet peeve, mind you. Another example is when you get to Luke’s home in Baticul and have to run back down to the port to retrieve the scrolls that the maids threw out, and then climb back up to his house again. It’s not like anything exciting happened on the three different elevators I took between those two points. It’s not like I don’t know what the trip between those points looked like - I just came from the port. There’s no reason not to just have it be automatic. Even attempts to reduce this - the wing bottle - are frustrating in their setup. By requiring me to spend money and keep inventory in order to use the teleport function, they are incentivising me to /not/ use the teleport function. They’re requiring me to spend money to /avoid/ doing something boring. And that’s, idk, kind of unnecessary and shitty? Like, usually in a game I want to be spending money in order to unlock new features and content and have more fun. Not to, like, avoid playing parts that I’ve played already. idk, because i do realise that streamlining some of these moments would require alterations to cut down some of the movement in the plot - and ultimately I think flying between cities to talk with different people before acting isn’t bad or unrealistic plot wise. buuuut, even if some of the multi-part cutscenes need to stay for this effect, even if not all of them could have been streamlined into a more direct line of action and travel, even if not any specific moment of this travel is unbearably awful, it still frustrates me that this clearly wasn’t even a priority for the devs.