#anyway so there’s a guy who seems like he’s constantly being kidnapped and the protags think he’s plotting with them

[mushroom-soup-is-my-religion]

Last time I took a deep dive into how the legal system in my story worked I ended up with a spinoff plotline about supervillain insurance fraud

i care so much about fictional morality and ethics but not in a lame ass "is this character/ship problematic" way. i'm cringe for other reasons.

[ladyloveandjustice]

999/ZERO ESCAPE SPOILERS

My gf and I have been playing the zero escape/999 games together and we’re on the third one. I like, narrated the entire first game myself (INCLUDING THE SUPER LONG SECTIONS DESCRIBING DEAD BODIES IN GRAPHIC, WORSHIPFUL DETAIL, I THINK THE AUTHOR HAS A THING. I DON’T KNOW WHAT BUT THERE IS DEFINITELY A THING). (the second and third games don’t have that though so maybe people complained or maybe that was supposed to be a specific personality trait for the first games narrator.) 

I just voiced the investigation parts of the second and third games, since the cutscene/novel sections are voiced in those. It’s really my greatest contribution to the gameplay experiences since my girlfriend ends up solving most to the puzzles (she can math and I can’t).

I’ve liked the first game best so far- I really didn’t like it much at the beginning, but then the twist ending was really well done and ACTUALLY THE TWIST I WAS HOPING FOR. How many times during the game did I say “I hope our girlfriend is zero, the mastermind” and “I hope our girlfriend is the one who murdered this guy” just because I wanted there to be more to Akane’s character than “our generically sweet love interest”. THEN she turns out to be a Machiavellian well-intentioned extremist mastermind and the real narrator of the game (Akane why do you like dead bodies so much) and i was like “YES”. 

The second game was all right. I like Phi a lot, but god Sigma was an annoying protagonist. Me and gf kept saying we wanted Junpei back.

Junpei was a fairly generic protag, but only annoyed me a few times (I did come to like him a lil bit when it was revealed Akane was the mastermind and he...did not mind at all. Like there was no “my sweet innocent helpless Akane was a lie oh no” he’s just like “ok whatever i still love her even if she stuck me in a deadly game and arranged the deaths of a bunch of assholes”. Like not only is that is an incredibly unhealthy way of thinking, which is interesting, it’s also just kind of nice he apparently likes Akane for who she actually is, Machiavellian scheming and all)

Meanwhile Sigma was just super creepy to all the girls and filled with machismo and ugh. The twist at the end also was nowhere near as effective for me, like how the fuck did Sigma never notice he was 67 years old  instead of 22  and that he had a really obvious cyborg eye thing YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO FEEL THAT. how did he never run into any reflective surfaces and see himself. he has to be the least aware person on the planet. This is further proven by the fact he talks to Akane for FIVE MINUTES at the end of the game before looking down and realizing he has skeletal metal arms now. I LAUGHED FOR LIKE 20 MINUTES AT THAT.

As for the rest of the second game, i totally called that Tenmyouji was future Junpei btw, which i was very proud of. i like that Akane continued being a Machiavellian asshole but still seems to have mostly good intentions- like she seems to care about Junpei in a way, but also just. does not give a fuck about his feelings or anyone else's if its to serve her plan for revenge/the greater good. it's rare to see female characters get to be really morally grey and puppet-master-y like that. 

 I also liked that future Junpei drew the line at Akane putting his ten year old adopted child in a murder game and also deliberately infecting him with a deadly disease that made him want to kill himself. He didn’t want anything to do with her after that . 

It actually makes me like Junpei a lot more to know he's sort of obsessively protective and dedicated to anyone he really forms an attachment to, not just Akane, so her endangering someone he considered family, especially a kid, actually pisses him off. 

Other than that aspect though, the characters in the second game didn’t really feel as strongas they were in the first game overall. I overall liked Lotus, Snake and Clover’s development in the first game, but in this game it’s like...Luna, Clover and Alice were okay? But just kinda eh. And everyone else was urgh.

Now we’re on the third game and i have no idea wtf is going on. Junpei is like emo/goth now and being mean to everyone, even Akane, and being like “LET’S JUST KILL PEOPLE YO”. Akane said something happened to him in the last year and he changed, so i guess at least it will be explained. JUNPEI’S IN A GOTH PHASE. Also the third guy in Akane and Junpei’s team looks just like Steve Rogers so I’ve named him Captain America (his real name is Carlos). Which just leads to me being very annoying when a lot of the dialogue ends up fitting that

Junpei to Carlos: So you’re like a hero of justice, aren’t you

Me: DUH JUNPEI IT’S CAPTAIN AMERICA

Akane: (describes how Junpei used to be really nice and always like “I will rush 2 ur aid no matter what Akane���)

Carlos: He sounds like a hero from a comic book

Me: I RECOGNIZE FELLOW COMIC BOOK HEROES OF COURSE, AS CAPTAIN AMERICA

Carlos: I don’t really date or hang out with people much...

Me: MY ENTIRE BARBERSHOP’S QUARTET IS DEAD

I also tend to “enhance” Akane’s dialogue by having her mention constantly how she’s an asshole mastermind and I feel the game is better this way.

Akane: st-stop Carlos! I can’t possibly tell Junpei how I feel!

Me: I CAN ONLY EXPRESS MY AFFECTION FOR JUNPEI BY KIDNAPPING HIM AND PUTTING HIM IN LIFE THREATENING SITUATIONS, YOU KNOW THAT, CARLOS

Akane: let’s solve this puzzle zero set

Me: BTW WHEN I WAS ZERO MY PUZZLES WERE MUCH COOLER. THIS ZERO IS THE INFERIOR MASTERMIND

I don’t know how my gf puts up with me.

Anyway Junpei ended up getting like. decapitated in the fragment of the game we just played. also i guess we found his body parts all over the room before hand but Carlos kept insisting it was a model. WOULDN’T YOU BE ABLE TO TELL IT WAS REAL??? ESPECIALLY AKANE WHO HAS SEEN SEVERAL AND DESCRIBED THEM IN GRAPHIC DETAIL?

but nope. So upon this revelation Akane assumed Carlos killed Junpei. She was not at all impressed with his tragic “i have an ill little sister and America’s healthcare is fucked” backstory and WENT AFTER HIM WITH A CHAINSAW. I wanted to see if I could get an ending where she actually got him with the chainsaw but ended up making him improbably kill himself with an axe instead. WHOOPS.

And that’s where we are with this series. I’m glad I finally documented some of this because wow have these games been an overly convoluted wild ride. But kind of a cool one! We’ll see how things end.