#but. rocks don’t explode. best case scenario they collapse/implode

[burntheupholstery]

on characters

just played andromeda six’s episode 6, i see what the fuss was all about now. i’m not gonna say anything on that matter because i’ll wait for the full story (4 more episodes) before critiquing the frankly somewhat badly handled depiction of grief in episodes 1-5, but i do have something i want to say.

does anyone think the chemistry between the crew is ... lacking? feel free to discuss it with me, i bring it up because i’m trying to figure it out for fic, and i can’t seem to find in-text explanations for why they stick together, except possibly an anti-k’merii sentiment. that’s all well and good, spite can carry a person a long way, but this crew have supposedly been running together for several years now, so where’s the emotional connective tissue between them?

but burn, you ask, this is a romance vn, why is this important? shouldn’t the devs prioritize the relationship between LI and MC?

you’d be correct, imaginary audience! but what happens, i ask, to the LIs who you don’t romance? what happens to their plot, and what happens to them when their arc is over? i know i dislike a character who becomes a hanger-on. i especially dislike it when there are potentially rich inter-crew interactions to be had but they’re just left hanging. it’s nice to read about a group of friends who like each other anyway, isn’t it?

let me state before we go into the weeds that the aim of this post is for discussion and engagement (and my own analysis). pull up a carpet square, friends, we’re going down the character list by alphabet.

Ayame:

we know her relationship with Bash to be friendly, almost bestie-level, because they work together very often (such as on Cursa) and have similar interests (mecha). this is good! me like. i’d love to see more of their shenanigans! i’ll probably write a fic of them sparring or something, that’ll be fun.

we know her relationship with Calderon to be that of superior-subordinate, but also of friends, but we see very little of it aside from being told. i also wanna write a fic of the time Aya broke him out of jail, because you know Cal is gonna be pissed off she’s breaking the law, even if she’s breaking the law to help him.

we know she and June seem to have a Responsible-Older-Brother and Misbehaving-Little-Sister thing going on, which is alright, but still rather shallow. furthermore, do they bond over the loss of a sibling? do they know the other has experienced the same loss? that seems like a big oversight to me, maybe the devs will expand on that in the future?

we know she likes Damon enough to have slept with him (i don’t personally believe sex = a relationship; i’m more in the sex = lust camp, so just telling me ‘they slept together’ isn’t relationship shorthand in my book) and anyways it was a drunken thing, iirc. also, we see very little of them having a substantial conversation (the spar doesn’t count and i shouldn’t have to explain why) outside of work. i want to know what ayame thinks of their stabby assassin!! i wanna know if she likes cats as much as he does!!

we know next to nothing about her relationship with Ryona. I may be mistaken (i haven’t played the game exhaustively) but Ayame doesn’t have a scene in Ryona’s lab, nor do they interact a lot on-screen, and very little is said about what they think of each other aside from civilities.

finally, and perhaps most damningly, we have never seen Ayame react on-screen to Vexx, who has so much potential with Ayame. they’re both kitalphan, but Aya is first-gen and Vexx is second-gen, which is a perfect set up for conflict! (i go into this in my fic, come read?) but we see nothing on-screen. devs, is there a reason? you gave us the delicious hook of vexx’s parents being dead - why not expand on his kitalphan parentage a little, since Kitalpha imploding should’ve impacted his life as well. (i go into this in my fic ... come read?)

The most we’ve read about Ayame’s apparent distance from the team is revealed in Ep6, where she reveals some spoiler-ish facts about her attitude towards the crew, her brother Akira, and family. I eagerly await more news on her relationships for future episodes.

Bash:

i’ve covered his relationship with Ayame, and i’ll preface this section with the admission that his arc hasn’t come yet, so perhaps it explains the apparent lack of focus on Bash in the main plot.

see, Bash occupies the unique position as the one guy on the crew who’s connection with the two Pillars of Plot (Zovack and Peg’asi) to be extremely tenuous. everyone else has a big fat bone to pick with both Pillars, driving the plot forwards, but Bash ... i’ll wait and see.

back to his inter-crew relationships. we have nothing on him and Calderon. who recruited him? Oppo? how did the recruitment interview go? how did he switch careers from arena fighter to engineer? what was he doing before being a fighter?

we have nothing on him and Damon, except the odd line here and there about Bash’s hand-to-hand skills. give me something here, devs, both are skilled fighters and one has a metal arm, there’s so much potential here!

we have very little on him and June. presumably the crew knows about June’s history, and clearly there is some familiarity with June’s orionite-rages, but beyond that? ...

we know about his you-saved-my-life crush on Ryona. i’m hoping his arc in the future episodes will feature the resolution of this little thread

and finally, absolutely nothing about Vexx except the usual anti-k’merii sentiment. what does our resident engineer think about one rehabilitated k’merii on their ship? no one knows. as a Vexxmancer i’m a little disappointed. i still want Bash in my traveller’s life, y’know?

i’m not the most Bash-inclined player, so if anything i said in this section is false, do point it out to me!

i’ve been plugging the lack of Ayame and Bash interactions by coming up with wild hesdcanons in my fic. the most recent example is a shopping trip they took together, come read! and pass judgement

Calderon:

we’ve covered Aya and Bash, so i’ll start with Damon.

there’s a substantial amount here - we gather from context clues that Cal is the one to recruit Damon, and Damon knows quite a bit about Cal, but we’re not sure exactly about the when, how, and why of both the recruitment and the depth of their relationship. (how do they know each other? i bet there’s a juicy story there.) we also haven’t seen them do anything other than talk shop since the bar on Nos Vega. even the mission scene on Orion was rushed and devoid of detail. now, focusing writing efforts on the MC was the correct decision for the devs, but i want to see the crew fight back-to-back!! there could be so much to write about — the trust between them, where did it come from? Damon is flighty, as Alisa’s scenes demonstrated, so how come Calderon trusts him so much?

we know very little about Cal and June. the scene they share on Cursa - their only time on-screen together - doesn’t have much on their relationship at all, only that June looks up to Calderon for his compassion. this doesn’t help much, because we don’t know what Cal thinks of June in response. again, if i have missed a line or two here and there, do point me in their direction, but my point is we know very little about the dynamics of this crew, even though we’re now 6 episodes in.

Calderon and Ryona is also a mystery. we have vague hints that they’re close in a we-killed-people-together sort of way (cal is aware of ryona’s aversion to killing, but nothing is said on this matter during the Orion mission) and we know Ryona is aware and slightly disapproving of Calderon’s quick temper, but what else?

Calderon and Vexx ... erm ... hostility??

Damon:

we’re covered Ayame, Bash, and Calderon, so we’ll start with June.

i ... don’t know what to say for him and June. i can’t recall any notable moment where he and June have exchanged a meaningful conversation. if i am misremembering, do let me know. what concerns me about this duo is that based on the views each have expressed in game, i don’t think they like each other all that much? i mean, Damon has his views about death, and June is torn up about his creation as a tool of violence and the death of Jules. that? that’s perfect conflict! another exciting angle of conflict between them is their fighting styles — Damon is, to use video game terms, a close-range DPS, and June is a tank/sniper hybrid, which should place them as the ultimate unbeatable tag team, but despite all these rich story threads, they don’t appear on-screen together for any substantial amount of time.

Damon and Ryona, though, i really really like. my personal headcanon for the reason for their bond is that the first thing Ryona did with Damon was kill a man, and since Ryona was recruited right after her traumatic run-in with the K’Merii, this act of mutually delivering violence deeply bonded her and Damon despite their vastly differing worldviews. but that’s my headcanon, what’s the devs’ take on this? giving us an unusual friendship is all well and good, but it’ll be even better if an explanation of events happens in-game! am hoping episodes 7-10 will give us more Damon&Ryona content!!

Damon and Vexx, i can also say i genuinely love. they...!! are just...!! i can’t even put it into meta, i just wrote a LOT of it into the fic, so if you want more Damon & Vexx shenanigans, hop on by the fic and witness the love i pour into them!!

June:

we’ve covered Ayame, Bash, Calderon, and Damon, so there’s only Ryona and Vexx to talk about.

we don’t know much about him and Ryona, which is a very big shame, because he is clearly afflicted by a condition that he doesn’t like or want. Ryona, however, is a medic/physician/doctor from a planet renowned for its medicine. do you see what i’m getting at? there is great potential for them! how does ryona react to him being the only successful implementation of biological orionite infusion? does she know? if so, why did June - and under what circumstances - did he tell her? if he didn’t tell her, what has she guessed? how does that affect their relationship?

Vexx ... erm ... ???

Ryona:

there’s not much to say here, because i’ve covered it all already.

we don’t know the details about her and ayame, but presumably they get along. does ryona know about akira? why, why not? i hope this gets brought up in episode 7 and after, it’d be a great place for it.

Bash has a crush on her, but we don’t know what she thinks about it. Episode 7 seems geared towards Ryona, though, so my hopes are up!

we don’t know the details about her and Calderon. there just isn’t much to go on, and this guy’s her captain.

her and Damon, we’ve already covered, they’re fantastic, 10/10, 💯, please continue.

June... :/

Vexx ... :// we have faint beginnings of something in the form of a doctor-patient relationship, but it’s not enough. why is she committed to healing him? is it professional pride? is it out of love for MC? depending on the answer, their dynamic is different, and will be interesting either way.

Vexx (my bias, my love, my one and only):

son, i know NOTHING about you. ayame? nothing.

bash? nothing.

calderon? nothing.

damon? mm, good shit, but 1/6 isn’t much.

june? nothing.

ryona? :/

this lack of relationships is a crucial oversight because i don’t feel that Vexx is connected to any of the crew. except for MC, who else is he living for? who else does he connect with? if MC doesn’t romance this LI, what is he doing in the story with his disproportionate weightage of plot relevance? i love vexx, im a sucker for the princess-and-her-bodyguard, but when i play other routes, im constantly puzzled by him. what are you doing here, buddy, where you have no friends, no past, and no future? i’d go mad, if i were him. or into a depressive funk.

so that’s all the characters. you’ll note that there are gems in there! Ayame and Bash, Damon and Ryona, Calderon and spite/duty/honor, and June and his lizard Jules. but there’s a significant lack of lateral connection. some of it can be pinned down to plot reasons:

the crew has been running from one planet to another since they picked up the traveller and thus has had no time to rest and interact

the crew is dealing with a massive, system-wide upheaval in politics and power, and many of them are personally caught up in it, which makes for heavy dinner table talk, so they don’t talk

this is still a romance VN, so space has to be made for MC/LI interactions

these gaos may well be foreshadowing, and this game still has 4 episodes to go, so i hope that by writing these out ... man, i don’t know. if the devs don’t find time to implement the lore allusions then i guess its ... fanfic time?

i’ve been reading spaceship crew fiction for a very long time and i believe the gaps im seeing isn’t a figment of my imagination, just as much as i believe the devs have it in them to write well. they did a wonderful job with the DLCs, after all!

I’m using headcanons to resolve this in my fic and also using my fic as a platform to play around in the sandbox of the A6 crew (please read it, i love writing it and i love discussing scifi) but if the dev’s read this - you may not, but if you do - this isn’t a put down or a ‘gotcha’, i’d love to see more canon interactions between the crew! this post is meant as character analysis and critique, and in good faith. plus, now that they’re on tilaarin, they can rest, so it’d be a perfect place to put in a relaxing scene like the one in Nos Vega!