#delta: My Motives Are Complex

[adelle-ein]

i couldn't take the fallout shelter babies ending in ztd seriously at all even knowing in advance it was coming. fellas is it fucked up to lock your mom and dad in an underground shelter together until they conceive you (in a teleportation pod) (also you and your sister have canonically seen this entire damn thing) (so that's fun)

i know it's supposed to be So Tragic And Moving but like. it's so funny. i couldn't take it seriously at all. though i liked diana's characterization a lot, glad she had a few moments to be something other than Dead Wifemom (she's like the only ztd new character that feels even close to being an actual person…)

and time loop brooch + phi being named after herself is really just a fun bonus. chef's kiss

[reynsfaceonpromoimages]

[alto-tenure]

Congrats on finishing ZTD! What did you think of it?

The tag for when I start talking about ZTD negatively as of right now is "my feelings on ztd are as complex as delta's motives", which I think is the tl;dr of it all.

For a not "too long; didn't read" version...

(CWs: discussions of suicide, crude language used for canon behavior)

I had fun playing it, to start with. I enjoyed most of my experience playing ZTD. Going through the Execution fragments multiple times to make sure all the teams got executed was a slog, and once the novelty of the fragment format wore off it felt as though the game took forever to really kick into gear. Triangle was one of the last fragments I did before embarking on Carlos's Wacky Shifting Adventure via Ambidex, but I think had I done it earlier I would have found the pacing worse. The fragment format does kind of shoot the game's pacing in the foot at times. And I despise this game's lock system. It's really hard to tell when you're being locked out of the rest of a fragment vs the fragment being over. Also sometimes the locks are more generally nonsensical, which worked in my favor during my playthrough but in C-End you can get there without having confronted the FCFS decision at all, meaning you won't have the context to where Carlos went. You can get Q-1 straight away, without any of the foreshadowing from other Q-Team fragments of Mira's background. The nonlinearity of ZTD can work for it, but after enough time with the game and enough looking at the global flowchart (the good one, not the one with the video thumbnails) you start figuring out the patterns in advance. Some fragments take away suspense from others, too, like how doing Poison first takes away from the suspense of Fire in the decision to drink the antidote or not.

The graphics I'm okay with letting go because the fact that ZTD exists at all is frankly a miracle. But I will note that sometimes they made it difficult to take certain scenes seriously when I know they wanted those scenes to be. The shock-value-gore is whatever, I don't really care either way, and the worst parts were that I couldn't look when the HF showers went off & when Diana and Carlos committed their respective suicides. Sometimes the read on the game as "camp" is fine, and other times I feel like the game really wanted me to take it seriously and it just didn't land for me as something serious. I wanted to laugh.

Akane in this game...I think in some ways the people writing her dialogue were taking her personality as "June" at face value without considering the facade that it is (versus the parts of it that aren't; it isn't all an act), but I don't agree with the criticism of "it feels like Akane was replaced by a clone in ZTD". There were definitely portions in the game where I thought she was being too altruistic, but I don't think it's so OOC as to be written off as "not her". It definitely isn't perfect writing, but I think people in some ways were expecting too much of it.

Delta came out of nowhere for me, and even seeing the evidence it still feels cheap. Can't get over my initial reactions, I guess.

I actually don't hate Eric. He's kinda interesting. Admittedly, the most interesting thing about him is never really discussed again, but holy shit am I invested in his fucked up family.

I also really like the plot device of the ambiguity of whether Carlos killed Delta or not, but had I been playing without contact with the community I'm not sure I would have...known about the post-game epilogue files at all. Maybe a more traditional VN style sequence over the credits would have been suited for it, or something? Or more like a normal movie, as opposed to little scenes in prose.

All in all, I'm grateful this game exists, and I'm glad I played it, and I had fun with it overall. It was a net positive experience, even though I'm not without my criticisms of it.

[paingoes]

🚨🚨 Paris rant incoming!! 🚨🚨

My thoughts on him are somewhere between "you exist in the context of all that came before you" and "cool motive, still murder." Because yeah, he does have reasons to do what he does. Sometimes he doesn't want to be cruel to Delta. He doesn't really believe that Delta can care and feel things. He tries to be nice sometimes. Every adult and influence in his life (except Lorelei) encourages him to do evil stuff, and he's young enough that it mostly works.

HOWEVER all that being said he's still a slave owner that did a lot of very messed up stuff to Delta, his slave. And then that thought snaps everything back into black and white for me and I stop feeling pity for Paris again. So. I'm still a hater. A hater with more complex feelings on Paris, but a hater nonetheless.

I am really excited for the eventual reunion tho, and also really good job on the story.

actually paris does believe delta can feel things just like anyone else! he just does not care about or value anybody else’s feelings for most of his life! he has incentive to treat and present delta as an emotionless object but he knows that its not true. which is even worse :)

and yeah you have a right to! he did for sure inherit a psychic slave and he did for sure abuse him beyond any reasonable measure. paris was genuinely fucking evil to delta and delta has every right to hate him for it and theres nothing he can do to take that back.

crash out definitely isnt written to pity paris. its more like. “okay where do we go from here?”

like what do you do when youve fucked up your own life that bad and you hurt so many people in the process and now you finally have to face the consequences of it. what are you supposed to do.

stay tuned to find out i guess

[sweatertheman]

okay look i know its in bad taste to spend this long dogging on other people's ships but i've just been having a lot of thoughts about this today.

the idea that suselle is a foregone conclusion is stupid! and that's not because toby fox is just trolling, he's not that dense to pull a pointless bait and switch. its stupid because part of deltarune's narrative is about narrative, and about predestiny! beads on rails, puppets on strings, dark worlds as fiction, all this!

like, let me use my ralsology degree to paint a picture for you here. ralsei, as a symbol, represents traditional RPG stuff. he's been suckered into a worldview where darkners are NPCs, less than people, and ultimately exist to serve both the player characters and the broader narrative. his perception of right and wrong is childish, and he offers simple-minded platitudes as explanations. ralsei believes that everything they do is predestined to some degree, that while they can change how they act and how others feel about them, their relationships, their arcs, their battles, these are all laid out in advance.

and he's wrong about all of it.

darkners are very much people with intricate personal lives, hopes and dreams, complex motivations behind their actions. right and wrong is more complex than, well, right and wrong, and their quest is very much not predetermined, as we can see on snowgrave.

what's more, deltarune's narrative seems to be about how ralsei is wrong. with the secret bosses, and the beads on rails and all that stuff. kris is an unwilling protagonist being forced down a path they don't want to go down. darkners are shown to be people, and yet it seems like the DELTA WARRIORS will be forced to treat them like they aren't. susie herself rejects every narrative and gameplay convention ralsei lays out for her, from the concept of being nice to enemies on principle to the player's sense of choice in the game they're playing.

...and you mean to tell me you trust Ralsei here?!

yes, that's right! ralsei, guy whose worldview is making everything worse for everyone, himself included, is a suselle shipper!

if you go back to the ferris wheel billboard after the susie intermission, ralsei will think to himself that susie must still be thinking about her ride with noelle.

and guess what HE'S FUCKING WRONG. all susie cares about is what the hell a ferris is!

(this isn't to say susie didn't enjoy the ride or doesn't sometimes think about noelle, just to be clear.)

i think there might even be another scene with the same premise but i can't remember.

point is, ralsei expects after a scene he knew was gonna happen that susie would be thinking about noelle, and he's wrong. its likely ralsei believes that suselle is gonna happen, because its part of susie's arc or something.

and considering his worldview hurts everyone, and susie rejects it wherever she can, and generally the story is about how the characters in the story reject the paths forced upon them by the narrative, are we really saying that ralsei is right about this one thing?

saying "susie likes noelle but doesn't know it yet" just feels so gross sometimes! like, come on! you're basically doing exactly what ralsei is doing, saying that its a foregone conclusion that they'll end up together, and that if susie doesn't show signs of having feelings for noelle (even in a goddamn non-canon valentines email!!) its because she just hasn't realized that that's what she wants yet. its almost like saying you know what she wants better than she does, that she'll be happy doing what you want her to do, because that's just how it is.

and i know susie deltarune isn't real but come on! there's a clear parallel here between the narrative imposing arcs and labels upon characters against their will which they then fight against, and imposing romantic feelings onto a character they don't seem to have because that's what's best for you!

i'm not going to say suselle isn't going to happen, but i am going to say there is NARRATIVE REASON for it NOT to happen, because the in-universe narrative, the legend of delta rune, fate, predestiny, WHATEVER, seems to be the bad guy here!

[dentpx]

maybe i'll make a cleaner post about this later but it seems so obviously dissonant with the themes of 999 and VLR that Zero's motivation would be so batshit insane and selfish. because obviously "let's save the world!" was not his primary motivation and no matter how many times a character says "my motives are complex" it doesn't make it true. especially because the characters in this game include Akane, Sigma, Phi, and Junpei.....who are all legacy characters with a really strong moral code, 3 of whom are ALREADY taking actions to save the world and would definitely take further action if they KNEW there was more shit to be working on.

what's REALLY strong about 999 and VLR is that the characters go through a bunch of crazy suffering, some of which is by Zero's design and some of which is caused by the randomness of 9 separate characters having 9 separate belief systems and motivations. but then, when you get to the end of the game, it makes sense that things HAD to progress in the way they did to get to the end result, which is generally pretty selfless and did not intend harm on the participants. and most of the really nefarious stuff that happened was the result of the players themselves jumping to conclusions and taking drastic actions.

at the end of ZTD, you DEFINITELY do not feel like "wow, that was crazy, but also this was the only solution to a batshit insane problem". you feel like "who is this guy and why did he do all that". i did honestly enjoy the over the top violence and edginess of ZTD but it did not make sense in the story and honestly all it really does is make you distrust Delta.

also part of this is an issue with ZTD having three protagonists too who are split up into three groups...there's less space to play around with how people are motivated because there's less "bad actors". pretty much everyone in the game is acting selflessly and rationally besides Eric and Mina. to me at least it seemed like it was implied every time a protagonist character made an immoral choice, that was possibly the result of Delta's mind control. so if pretty much everyone has the same goal and no one wants to make selfish choices, the character driven conflict from previous games just isn't there.

i did have a good time playing it but i'm REALLY glad i came back to it many months after playing VLR and also that i had no spoilers. the story stuff that worked, worked! and i enjoyed that stuff! and the story stuff that was stupid was stupid and i'm just going to laugh about it for a little bit.

[privateolives]

I saw people talk about their Zero Time Dilemma fixes around the tag so I thought I'd dump in my convo on the topic too (With shout-out to @oriko-magicas's galaxy brain read on Akane and Junpei)

Absolute wall of text below.

Me: I'm having trouble finding it, but there was a post talking about Akane and Junpei in Zero Time Dilemma that I really liked the interpretation of It's essentially talking about how Akane don't want anything but the perfect future with Junpei. She went through so much and spend so long aiming for fhe one needle hole solution to live that she can't settle for anything but her ideal fantasy ending anymore. Meanwhile Junpei still experiences time the way it normally goes and he was burned by 999. He knows things will never be the same cause THEY'RE not the same, but he's willing to work with that to stay with her And I think it's a super thematic read, especially when you consider their VLR attitudes

Friend: Yeah, you know, that actually makes a lot of sense to me

Me: https://www.tumblr.com/privateolives/730880206913552384?source=share

Okay I’m thinking of ztd again, and it’s how Akane only accepts a future with Junpei if it can be fairytale perfect. She wants so desperately to be that kid who died in the incinerator again, the one… There it is

Friend: That would certainly explain the way she frequently reacts to this new cynical, jaded Junpei

Me: I don't think that's her exact motivation for that ending but the sentiment is perf Yeah

Friend: It makes much more sense to me. Every time she shakes her head and says "what happened to you" it's because she's hopeful to see that same boy she used to know

Me: I think Junpei's attitude would make a lot more sense if the assholery was played up when Akane acts like he should still be the same like he was before 999. Or like the world could be how they saw it before then. It'd underline the dynamic better of "I need you to be the person I cried out to back then" and he's like "I love you but you literally made that impossible" … paired up with Carlos like "I am begging you to just talk" Carlos: you are both cute and valid but I NEED you to communicate

Friend: I think maybe part of it is that Junpei's jaded asshole net is thrown a bit wide. 'cause on one hand it is like he's upset at Akane for 999 and part of it is like he's upset that she acts like he should be the same after that, but then there's also all the shit that he went through since then and it feels like he blames her for that as well He's been through a lot in what has somehow just been one year and it feels like, perhaps fitting for someone who has also become an alcoholic, he's looking to put the blame for it all on someone

Me: Yeah Also I've been thinking, and I think there's an easy fix to the stupid "complex motives" crap. And a lot of Delta honestly

Friend: hell yeah let me hear it

Me: The whole frame he jeeps setting up with the snail. It's all about a series of small butterfly effects that cause an extremely specific outcome. That's what he wants to do too, same as the other zeroes, but he has one particular handicap: he can't shift or read timelines. He won't just know how to make the bricks fall to get the exact outcome he wants. But if he could gather enough shifters, he could read their hopping around through their minds. Because resonance would make the memories clearer. So he sets up the game that can only be completed by getting the exact result he wants and then introduces the piranha - Mira - to the equation to ensure it won't be a dead end stalemate Then in the end he can explain that yes, his motives are complex. Because the solution to save 8 billion without killing 6 billion is a hairline precise set of circumstances that he wouldn't be able to figure out what is naturally. So he had to make them create it. He had to make them all resonate to read them and make them all resonate to give them all awakened shifter powers for the future and to read at all. Furthermore I would play up his ego. The smugness of his own intelligence being double edged to believing he has to cause this himself because he's the only one who can. A staunch belief that he HAS to be what causes the bricks to fall as they should. And it'd make his point of "but I didn't do anything in this timeline. Everyone is prepped and noone is dead" more valid. Because he doesn't shift. He doesn't emotionally register all the timelines he massacred to get this one. He only know the actions that caused his personal outcome as a list of checked boxes checked off through their memories

Me: Furthermore, there could be another reason why he has to be the one triggering these events. I was super annoyed that it was like "Oh so now free the soul isn't enough. We need another terrorist group with a world ending leader. And what was the left thing about?" Well what if its not a separate terrorist group. What if the religious fanatic he's talking about is himself, transported forward in time. A younger version of himself is ending the world to create the ideal existence Dio was talking about. But the Delta who arrived in the original way back when doesn't shift. He has to live all those years. He meets interesting being like Sean that makes him realize that the differences between people makes for various choices that makes life beautiful. So now he has to find a way to out-checkmate himself to stop himself. How? Prep a group of people capable of doing what he can't to try and outsmart him. And set up a winning condition entirely set on being able to do that.

Friend: that's actually so brilliant because yeah I think definitely the weakest part of this outcome is that it doesn't really solve the problem that he set out to solve "You're all really motivated now!" oh so… what they wouldn't have tried to stop a terrorist attack if he hadn't made them all kill each other? the heck is that also, yeah I was going to ask you about that at some point. like, he doesn't mention Left at all in ZTD and I was confused if Sean was supposed to be related

Me: I don't think so. Because he was an old man when he met Sean in the hospital. But I think he was fascinated by Sean's approach to life And maybe made him consider that something could be beautiful outside of Left

Friend: this man just goin around creating marvels of science to preserve dead little boys

Me: I'm thinking part of it is also like Solving the conundrum of giving him whatever he wanted. He has his dreams of the future. He can give him that. But he's not in despair of having to die before that reality. So he gives ukm the option of death too By just giving him the option at all, he's ensured both will happen somewhere Thus the ideal outcome of how he can have both comes true Lastly, Mira's ending. I think they should have empathized more that she became a killer to understand experiencing emotions instead of just pretending them. She chases Eric because she thinks she wants to feel that rush again, but her connection with Sean could show her something different. That either through resonance she could experience emotions through others OR that you can still essentially be human even if you're only able to "simulate" having those emotions, like a robot (:Sean) does.

Me: Meanwhile Sean both wants better for and cannot forgive Mira for her crimes. But thanks to the choice with the bad and happy ends, he has an answer for how to both make Mira live with her crimes and ensure a future where it doesn't happen. By creating a split timeline where she goes back and stops her crimes from being committed. In this case, the original Mira would still know and have to live with what she did. But in the other timeline a young Mira never becomes the heart ripper and the crimes are undone. The sins are therefore both being punished and remembered for happening and erased to begin with at the same time.

Friend: you know what I like that one. that's a good way of interpreting it, especially with the way the transporter works also, doubly digging this idea. Mira being shown this robot child who either somehow experiences emotion or at the very least simulates it in such a way what it fools everyone (and also is capable of calling her out on her own emotional mistakes) should have so much more of an impact on her

Me: Yeah Like I genuinely think you could fix this game either a few tweaks

Friend: yeah absolutely also I'm not sure what the amnesia element really did for it? I guess it was to confuse the SHIFTers so they wouldn't know they had already SHIFTed but to what end?

Me: It might be to confuse the computer. Keep it from figuring out its not the real Sean too fast If it remembers being Sean it'd be easy to compare and contrast all the things that Sean definitely couldn't do or know and reach the conclusion If it doesn't remember being Sean, there's nothing to compare any contradictions to. It can only just assume that the reasons are things it can't remember Also, if the computer ONLY has Eric and Mira, it makes it more incentives to latch onto them and care about their situations, despite them both being monsters in their own right Oh Also The Carlos thing Rather than just "I couldn't have met you guys" you could do: 1) in order to fix this we need phi and Sigma here. That means we need a timeline where Akane and Junpei escape but don't stop Zero or the radical-6 outbreak. So he breaks in to bust them out. 2) they need the timeline where Delta gives them answers. Meaning they need a timeline where Zero "wins". So he can't interfere. 3) split worlds principle. By just introducing the choice to stop zero's plans or not, he's creates both options. This is the world where he doesn't stop Zero. But because he comes pre-packadged with the knowledge of what's gonna happen, he can still tail actions to secure the timeline that'll allow for them all to stop zero So there is a timeline where he stops Delta before DCOM, but because of the anthropic principle (there must be a perciever for the option to be percieved) Akane and Junpei never see it because they never had to go through the game. They only percieve the option where Carlos didn't stop Delta in time

Friend: that makes perfect sense to me gosh imagine that timeline, though. Akane and Junpei never go to DCOM so they never meet there poor Junpei is probably still chasing the ghost of this woman who …wait what was her reason for going to DCOM again?

Me: So her and Sigma could stol the outbreak Stop Of radical-6 ALSO also

Friend: yeah that's what I assume but I swear the game acts like she doesn't even know about Sigma or Phi or the outbreak

Me: (I've thought about how to fix this game a lot idk if you can tell) The thematic relevance of "but then I couldn't have met you guys" can actually be valid if you flip it around.

Friend: hahaha understandable how so?

Me: Because of Carlos, Akane can come to terms with the changes in Junpei and see the validity in the "broken" futures by showing there's things worth remembering even in the imperfect ones. Like the argument Junpei makes at the end of VLR, the relationships after the disasters still mean something to the survivors. And Carlos helps Junpei realize there's still fundamentally good people in the world and come to terms with Akane and what she did and who she is now. By inserting Carlos they're able to help mend their relationship. And if Carlos never met them because the DCOM experiment didn't go down like it did, their relationship wouldn't have been mended either They'd still just end up like how they did at the end of VLR. Essentially dead to each other "You're not who I thought you were, goodbye"

Friend: very true it certainly seems like by this game they were never really going to be able to talk it over on their own he was a necessary mediator

Me: Not to mention If Carlos never met THEM, he'd never realize the cause of the reverie syndrome to save Maria

Friend: True! Gosh she's kind of a whole anomaly herself

Me: Yes! I think it could be cool if the they worked her more into Carlos and his abilities tbh Let's think back to the 999 lore The idea of the Sender and Receiver If Maria was the "sender", she could have gone into reverie when she was stuck in the fire, trying to save herself and her family. She continues to be stuck in reverie because she keeps simulating how to a) save her family totally and b) save Carlos from all his other eventual dooms The problem with saving her family is that there is a huge world crisis going down soon that's gonna wipe out most of humanity anyway! So? Make sure Carlos goes to DCOM to save her and have her essentially be a satellite quantum simulator to feed Carlos his insights And through that also learn from Akane and Junpei (or just the experience itself) that either the timeline where their parents was also saved still exists but isn't percievable Or come to terms with their death by still having Carlos that survives both DCOM and the would-be apocalypse And thus be able to lay the endless simulations to rest and wake up (With the added cute twist that she already knows Akane and Junpei and their relationship with her brother when she wakes up. Thus why she's so invested in it in the epilogue)

Friend: that is a bizarre kind of adorable and sweet! she's his own quantum computer though I wonder if they'd be able to still use those abilities after she wakes up in that case

Me: I'm guessing it'd just go back to working like it did in 999. Carlos himself might be able to do it on his own from longtime exposure too, who knows.

[mamuzzy]

I love all the republic commando stuff you reblog! I just finished the books and I’ve started the game. Who’s your favorite character?

I'm glad you like it! RepComm needs all the love it can get! It was a long time since I got engaged in a book series this much and I'm currently reading Imperial Commando.

Republic Commando is full of interesting and complex characters, be it clone, jedi or the members of the Cuy'val Dar, and the Delta Squad also got more depth (which probably will motivate me to also try the game!) and I think the complexity comes from the fact that nobody is black and white morally and personality-wise, they are on a spectrum of greyness which allows them to show both their good and nasty sides. Makes it feel real. I could go with Kal Skirata and Walon Vau… but the question is more about who is my favorite and not the one I can fill a page of character analization.

Soooo I go with Ordo Skirata. I'm sure if the author had spent more time with Nulls other than Ordo and Mereel, then we could have gotten more picture of the rest. But every tiny detail he gets in the books made me invested more in him emotionally (and probably a bit on personal level, haha!). Daddy's little walking higly-competent anxiety-bomb. I would learn to bake a cake for you everyday just to make you feel loved, safe and keep your belly full, precious little meow-meow. Every scene with him being self-conscious, awkward and anxious if he is good enough to be loved by the person he cherishes the most, is always feeling like a punch in the gut. I love him so much.

[crttvset]

see i don’t think the ztd characters are AWFUL like of course i despise eric (and mira somewhat) but i Do enjoy diana and carlos and sean and i suppose delta CAN be a bit entertaining at times (his motives are complex if you even care) and i do think that it is a pretty goddamn good game but the same cannot be said for aini. all the characters are dogshit (except for you uru you’re special (and his mom i guess)) NONE of them are interesting to me like at least im able to tolerate. eric. but i can’t tolerate lien Please somebody kill lien he sucks so much oh my lord

[aubreyathame]

im gonna fucking explode i was thinking about delta from ztd and i was trying to say the whole "my motives are complex" line but every time i try to do it the only voice i can give it is the fucking gman from half life and i don't think i'm prepared for that

just fucking. "my motives are...cccomplex, mr.. freeman."

[sammybloo]

It's time for answers!

Due to an error on my part, 2 of these things never happened. You will also notice, 2 answers were tied for first place. However, one of those two answers is a thing that definitely happened.

Explanations for all options under the tags. Spoilers for all three games included.

A villain has prosopagnosia: prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is a condition that makes it harder for you to remember and identify faces. It isn't really a problem with memory, so much as your brain isn't tuned in to the subtle differences in facial features (size, placement, etc) that make faces memorable. A person with prosopagnosia recognises people from external queues - voice, mannerisms, style, etc. My mum has prosopagnosia, and I definitely have dome trouble recognising faces.

The villain of the first game (Ace) has prosopagnosia. This is clearly identified, by name. The protagonist (Junpei) becomes clued into this during a scene where Ace has to correctly sort a series of pictures of the game's cast. He freezes up, and refuses to do it. It's worth noting, few people would struggle to sort these photos even if they had prosopagnosia, because the characters have varied ethnicities, ages, styles, body types, etc, and all of these things are visible in the photos.

Ace later identifies his prosopagnosia as a leading cause for his evil deeds. He is conducting experiments on children in order to find a way to see the world through other peoples' eyes, so he will be able to recognise faces. I am only aware of one other character in media who is identified as having prosopagnosia, and he is also a villain. Wonderful to see this harmless neurological quirk immediately being associated with evil as it comes into the cultural conciousness!

Someone makes a virus that kills 6 billion people to maybe kill one terrorist: His motives were complex. The only debate here was that Delta didn't explicitly make the virus, but he certainly unleashed it.

Someone meets their child that was conceived in a different timeline: In fact, both parents meet both of the children they had together. Hell, the robot version of the mother meets the daughter and neither is any wiser. This one happens a bunch in the third game, and is only possible because of an item we'll discuss later.

A plot point requires the main character to never see their reflection: In 999, the first thing Junpei does when he wakes up is find a mirror to look in, to ground himself in his impossible situation. By contrast, in Virtue's Last Reward, Sigma bypasses every opportunity to catch even a glimpse of himself

It's time for answers!

Due to an error on my part, 2 of these things never happened. You will also notice, 2 answers were tied for first place. However, one of those two answers is a thing that definitely happened.

Explanations for all options under the tags. Spoilers for all three games included.

A villain has prosopagnosia: prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is a condition that makes it harder for you to remember and identify faces. It isn't really a problem with memory, so much as your brain isn't tuned in to the subtle differences in facial features (size, placement, etc) that make faces memorable. A person with prosopagnosia recognises people from external queues - voice, mannerisms, style, etc. My mum has prosopagnosia, and I definitely have dome trouble recognising faces.

The villain of the first game (Ace) has prosopagnosia. This is clearly identified, by name. The protagonist (Junpei) becomes clued into this during a scene where Ace has to correctly sort a series of pictures of the game's cast. He freezes up, and refuses to do it. It's worth noting, few people would struggle to sort these photos even if they had prosopagnosia, because the characters have varied ethnicities, ages, styles, body types, etc, and all of these things are visible in the photos.

Ace later identifies his prosopagnosia as a leading cause for his evil deeds. He is conducting experiments on children in order to find a way to see the world through other peoples' eyes, so he will be able to recognise faces. I am only aware of one other character in media who is identified as having prosopagnosia, and he is also a villain. Wonderful to see this harmless neurological quirk immediately being associated with evil as it comes into the cultural conciousness!

Someone makes a virus that kills 6 billion people to maybe kill one terrorist: His motives were complex. The only debate here was that Delta didn't explicitly make the virus, but he certainly unleashed it.

Someone meets their child that was conceived in a different timeline: In fact, both parents meet both of the children they had together. Hell, the robot version of the mother meets the daughter and neither is any wiser. This one happens a bunch in the third game, and is only possible because of an item we'll discuss later.

A Sudoku puzzle becomes the emotional crux of the plot: The entire purpose of the first game is that Akane must concoct a situation in which Junpei can telepathically communicate the answer to a Sudoku puzzle back in time, to avoid the death of her 9 year old self. This is the moment of the first game – I think a majority of players would cite this as the most memorable bit. So why did so many people vote for this option? Well, as I’ve learnt since making this poll, they actually replaced the sudoku in the PC remake with an entirely different puzzle! I have no idea what the justification for this was, but it feels like a huge blunder to change such an iconic scene.

A plot point requires the main character to never see their reflection: In 999, the first thing Junpei does when he wakes up is find a mirror to look in, to ground himself in his impossible situation. By contrast, in Virtue's Last Reward, Sigma bypasses every opportunity to catch even a glimpse of himself. @kommunistkaitou mentioned in the tags that they recorded 129 objects that Sigma should have reasonably seen his reflection in. If he had caught any of these, he would have noticed that he was in his body from 45 years in the future. He also apparently never scratches his robotic eye at any point, nor feels his longer hair.

A pivotal character is added, and then retconned to never exist in the next game: It turns out this answer is contentious with some fans. Whether you’re satisfied with Zero Time Dilemma or not, the situation I’m about to talk about is a pretty cut-and-dry example of a retcon.

In Virtue’s Last Reward, if you collect all the secret files, you get a secret ending, called “Another Time”. Most of the content of this ending seems very likely to be canon. For the most part, characters are just detailing what they plan to do next. But the character you control in this section is someone very special - ?. ? is an entity that has somehow shifted into Kyle’s body. It shows little awareness of its own identity, but knows everything about the events of the game so far. In Another End, Akane says that ? will be essential to the events of the next game. She says the same of Kyle, whose conciousness has shifted back into the past due to ?'s arrival.

The atmosphere in the fandom about this reveal was pure hype. ? is an entity with unbound access to the world - an uncontrolled variable. It is all-powerful and unknowable. The writer, Uchikoshi, acknowledged that ? was the equivalent of a character/concept from one of his previous works, an entity known as Blick Winkel. In its previous appearance, BW had only been there right at the end - how would the presence of such a character shape an entire game?

The answer is, it wouldn't. Zero Time Dilemma released with no reference to ?, and no appearance of Kyle. Shortly after, Uchikoshi explained that the Another Time ending was non-canonical, but he had previously talked about it in Q and A's without ever indicating this was the case. This is the very definition of a retcon.

A few people argued that since ? is the player, by definition it is present in the game. However, there's a big difference between "the player" and "an entity that has seen the game world from the perspective of the player and then manifests in the world with the ability to act and speak". I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, if you're fine with how it played out that's okay, but there was definitely a shift between the expectation set by VLR and what was delivered in ZTD.

A character finally takes off their helmet, but their whole head comes off: And they were a kid and everything! The helmet-head is a big sphere so it rolls away. Poor Sean.

And the last thing that actually happens is... Aliens are introduced in the last entry in the series! Oh, how many people chose to forget. In the Zero Escape series, thought and conciousness can travel through time, but physical matter cannot. This is all thrown out the window in ZTD when they introduce The Transporter, a device that can duplicate matter across time and space. This device becomes a bandaid over all sorts of plot questions, and two of the characters even have sex in it. Where did such a device come from? Aliens.

A few people noted that we only have Zero II's word for it that the device was really created by aliens, and that's a fair point. Of course, if he was lying, that still leaves no real explanation for where the Transporter came from.

So, the two that didn't happen! First of all, the one that was purely my bad. Clive Palmer is NOT inadvertently canon. Clive Palmer is a shitty Australian billionaire with overblown ambitions. Among other harebrained schemes, Clive has long insisted that he is in the process of constructing the Titanic 2, a modern, functional replica of the original vessel. For the longest time, I believed that this ship was the one that the events of 999 take place on. However, this is just completely incorrect, and doesn't hold up to the slightest amount of research. The original Nonary Game took place on the Gigantic, a sister ship of the Titanic. I am proud to say I approached the creation of this poll with the same intellectual rigour Clive would have.

And finally, NO-ONE in mortal danger stops to explain the Trolley Problem. This one tricked a lot of people. There are so many similar moments, like someone explaining the completely fictional concept of Ice-9 while the characters are trapped in a freezer. The general consensus was that although no-one remembered the Trolley Problem being explained, it must have happened at some point. Alas, it simply did not. The third game has a few Trolley Problem-like situations, but no-one points it out by name, or even really explores any of the moral implications.

And, that's it! Honestly, there could easily be 3 more polls for Zero Escape without any repeated items.

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

💌 🤍 🎀

🎀 Give yourself a compliment about your own writing!

I have gotten really good at organizing and finishing long fics. Especially after all the mistakes I learned from finishing 300,000 words of Sailor Moon H, Half Blood Prince, I think now I've really hit my stride plotting longer fics out so that they stay within a manageable length. I've gotten much more confident starting them out and knowing what it takes for me to finish one even if the writing process takes a long time.

🤍 What's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

Not a whole fic, but part of the plot of one...

In The Parent Trap I had done a lot of work re-tooling the antagonist. The movies had a stereotypical female gold digger charicature for the father's fianceé and I knew from the start that I didn't want to cast Seven in that roll. I also wasn't particularly enthused about what it would imply for KJ's judgement if I assigned her a male fianceé who had such enmity for her child.

The compromise was to give the antagonist role to a newer boyfriend "Nick", who would have a more complex ulterior motive than just coveting the status of being an Admiral's husband. The time traveling canon villain Braxton was a good fit.

I tried to drop hints about his secret identity into the text, but I don't think I was able to do so effectively. It's something that bothered me through the back half of the writing/posting process. I was never sure if the foreshadowing wasn't strong enough or if people were simply enjoying him as a two dimensional romantic antagonist and were skimming those details. It was a challenge to drop enough hints to make the audience and the child character suspicious without also making KJ seem to have dreadfully poor romantic judgement. I think if I have the opportunity in the future I'd try to rework the Nick / Braxton content to try to strike a better balance so that the reveal of his identity wasnt as much of a shock.

💌 Share something with us about an up-and-coming WIP that has you excited!

I'm working on "The Universe to Bend," a Voyager Novel Era story that brings back the Kremin Imperium and Omega Continuum as related threats and pits the exiled, bitter Denzit Janeway and a grieving, outcast Q against them. I've wanted to do something with Denzit for a while. (I always hated that they just dumped her on Sormana and were like "She gets to be a single mom now, she wont mind giving up her old space explorer dreams for that"). Q also gave me the chance to resurrect the Protostar and Hologram Janeway for the adventure, and to see how the Maquis crew from Denzit's original universe is faring without her Voyager. The last one has been really really exciting! I have gotten to explore a Chakotay would have to make it through the Delta Quadrant with his Maquis raider without ever meeting his universe's Janeway!

[alto-tenure]

the issue is. I had this essay prepared to write after I finished ztd about how ZE inches you closer and closer to empathizing with Zero as the game continues. in 999 the deaths of characters like nijisaki and musashidou and kubota and ace (the last in safe end) all feel like there was only ace to blame, and that in some ways they got what they were coming to them, even though they couldn't be saved in the end. and of course, at the end, you have the reveal that it was all to close the paradox on the side where akane lives. by the end, even though you have to recontextualize many moments, you have an understanding of what "being zero" meant to akane. in vlr as you start jumping between more and more timelines you start to accept the mindset of zero that all timelines are necessary. virtue's last reward leaves the player not with the conviction to change fate you built throughout the game, but with the timeline you left behind, on the question of whether the ends truly justified the means.

zero time dilemma attempts something similar. all of the orchestrators of their games all in some ways challenge the player to see if the ends justified the means, but delta does it the most directly, even challenging the characters in-universe with his explanations of complex motives. but with the stakes of this game high from the outset coming out from vlr setting the bar at apocalyptic-level, they end up having to justify his ends with an even higher threat that falls flat for me because while I do understand the whole "Sigma and Diana need to make him and Phi come into existence" part, it falls apart in the endgame when he tells them that he instilled in them also a drive to stop the true threat. because if Sigma, Phi, and Akane were told that radical-6 was made to prevent a larger disaster I have no doubt they would have already dedicated every resource possible to finding that person as well, no death games required. and when none of the characters agree with the premise that the ends justified the means...it's hard for the player to be convinced as well that it's an open question whether delta's means justify the ends as defined in the game.

[aaronymous999]

I really dont like Delta but valid opinion reblogging to add some ztd positivity on people’s dashes I don’t like it but we all clown on it way too much

This post is cool I’ve never thought of him that way??? The exclusive way me and my friends discuss him is motives are complex silly stupid old man but yeah you’re right

I wish I had the strength to actually seriously analyze ztd you are much stronger than me

delta is such a good villain because he's simultaneously the origin and the culmination of the entire story of the zero escape series. even if he wasn't planned during 999 he's still central to it. he IS what hongou wanted - what he created the first nonary game to produce. he can access the morphogenetic field and control people. in doing so, he can alter the entire course of human history with minimal effort. in a way, hongou was successful! because he created the nonary game, akane enacted her revenge against cradle pharmaceutical, which was essentially another arm of free the soul. because of that, she dedicated her life to preventing the radical-6 outbreak caused by free the soul with the ab project. because of the ab project, sigma met diana at d-com, and participated in the decision game with her. because sigma and diana were stranded alone in the shelter following the conclusion of the decision game, diana gave birth to phi and delta. with delta, the goal of the original nonary game finally culminated in someone who could use the morphogenetic field to control people, and control people he did.

delta is no different from akane. his motives, like hers, were complex. he needed to create a history where his life could be assured so that he could achieve his goals. his goals, however, took over 100 years to achieve. he likely had his hands in every single event that lead up to his own birth. sure, perhaps he didn't have anything to do with the sinking of the titanic at the young age of 8. maybe he did, or maybe it was just a random tragedy, just like the death of his brother, left. a probability that forever changed the course of his life. whatever the case may be, it set him on a trajectory to manipulate dashiell gordan, who in turn spurred hongou to run the nonary game. and throughout his life, random tragedies continued to happen. he set out to manipulate the course of history because he observed that there are moments when a single snail can make the whole world go extinct.

life is simply unfair, don't you think?

[linesonwhite]

Scheduled post 01: There was a time earlier this year when I was trying to sum up everything I remember the most about Zero Time Dilemma. Then later on, at the anniversary of Zero Time Dilemma’s release, I produced this -

Bonus Vulgar Language Version here.

[sapphire-mage]

Brief Two Year Retrospective of ZTD

ZERO TIME DILEMMA SPOILERS

I don't 'hate' Zero Time Dilemma like certain people, but I have such a bizarre relationship with it.

-Team Q makes me deeply uncomfortable and is by far the aspect I like to remember the least. None of that is Q's fault. I like Q, but him being in that group didn't do him favors.

-Junpei will always be my main ZE love, but man, Team C sure did... exist... to do stuff... apparently... Shout outs for Team Boring Bisexuals, I guess.

-Delta is, by far, Uchikoshi's weakest villain, and yet I will quote that man as if I stanned him more than any villain in that series or AI's games. I love his complex snail motives.

-Did we really need Diana licking alcohol off the floor? Was that really a character development that was going to change the world?

All of these mixed feelings! ALL OF THEM! And yet, two moments eclipse all those feelings...

THIS HAPPY MOMENT!

And Junpei walking away like the stupid, sassy bitch that he is.

And those two are the reasons I'm happy ZTD exist. Which just goes to show that I ultimately want Junpei and Phi to be happy at all given times.