5 for the isat ask game!
5 - What's your favorite optional event?
VERY TOUGH ONE TO ANSWER. I'm gonna go right ahead and disqualify twohats bc it's a predictable answer. If I had to choose just one though I think it'd probably be the sus event. It really got my goat on my first playthrough bc I didn't realize you had to do it in ACT 4. If I remember correctly I think sus is the only optional event locked to ACT 4??? Now that I've actually done it though I'm quite fond of it.
Sus event is one that you really have to go out of your way to do. It kind of reminds me of the True Ending in SASASAP but More and I'm sure that's intentional. Like the requirements for sus quest necessitate that you're going to do it, if not the loop before ACT 5, very soon before it. You have to know pretty much everything about Time Craft and Wish Craft already, so whatever you're doing in the loops now is basically taking out any optional stuff before you hit the end. You have to pretty thoroughly remember how the script goes just so you know all the best ways to break it. I feel like if the True Ending route is Loop going through the motions so many times that they can't deal with holding their facade together any longer, the sus route is Siffrin waving a big red flag around for help. There's just no way you're going to stumble into sus without preplanning what to do to rack up your points and make Odile aware of how Wish Craft works.
So I think it's interesting how much Siffrin pushes back against Odile trying to figure him out. It's a pattern of behavior that I am well aware of where you're desperately going "HELP ME" but you're not willing to accept it when it's offered to you.
Siffrin spends an entire loop screwing everything up, to a point that's frankly kind of egregious even by Late Stage Timeloopers standards, and then they can't reckon with the consequences of it. I don't think sus event is as intentional of a cry for help for Siffrin as it is the player, mind you. But I do think it's. Very tragic. Yeah of course "it's too late" in the sense that Siffrin's about to talk to Euphie and the whole journey will end, but moreso it's that by the time that Odile can piece together all the information necessary to figure Siffrin out, Siffrin is just far too deeply entrenched in his self hatred and fear of abandonment to be dug out. I think if Odile could somehow figure it out in, like, early ACT 3, or if Isabeau was just a bit more pushy in getting Siffrin to do a feelings talk, maybe they'd actually be able to reach Siffrin a little. But they're always just a little too late, every single time.
I think the fact that you start really getting a bunch of weird points in ACT 3 gives this event a lot of buildup. For potential dozens of loops you'll see Odile brush against the truth of the situation, and then just barely miss. By the time she figures it out, it's too late. Explodes
Expounded upon slightly more in tags bc I don't like typing in post bodies I feel like a fish on land. eek
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into the deep end - 29k T orufrey fic.
the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the other.
for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.
the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.
but they were never whole to begin with, were they?
qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.
olly says nothing.
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Hot Take (by virtue of the fact that nobody but me cares enough about this character to have a Take about this):
(also spoilers for the Arc of a Scythe series under the cut)
Sycthe Constantine should've been permanently blinded by the acid. There are 3 main reasons for this and one explanation of how it could work within the series:
This would fix an issue that the aoas series has as a whole, that being the ableist undertones. Listen I understand that they probably aren't really indicative of Shusterman's beliefs, he wanted to make a story where the key question is "what if humanity conquered death" and it's hard to make a world like that while still justifying physical disabilities existing, I get it. But blinding Constantine would mean a disabled character and really help make the series feel less ableist.
There's a precedent for it. It is already establised by this point that death by corrosive acid is irreversible, it wouldn't be a huge leap of logic to say that, like the brain, the eyeball is too complex to truly reconstruct or that the optic nerve retained some sort of permanent damage. In my opinion it wouldn't require any explanation. If you've already established that acid can have irreversible effects then you can extend that to eyeballs all you like.
Think of the DRAMA. The TRAGEDY. Imagine being the only person in the world who is disabled. I understand that Scythe Constantine isn't a main character, no matter how much I might want him to be, so maybe this is too much for what is barely a side character, but just picture the feelings of inadequacy, and the hardship and the lack of acceptance or even basic accommodations etc. etc. And with the training that Scythes undergo he would likely still be able to keep his position as a Scythe, he has the capacity to be like that guy Caine from John Wick 4, or to make a more popular reference Daredevil.
Now the problem here is whether Goddard would let a blind Scythe into his inner circle. This is debatable but I don't think it's implausible. Constantine being blind would give him an even more iconic look. Whatever eye coverings he would go for (I like when characters have bandages over their eyes but realistically he would probably just wear sunglasses), and the presence of a cane (or ideally a seeing-eye dog but this is personal preference again, I confess) compounded with the iconography of his robe colour and material would make him one of the most recognisable Scythes in the world. This would appeal to Goddard as it is stated in the first book in the series that he wants high visibility, which is why he chooses Junior Scythes that have specific racial leanings even when that is much more rare in this world and why he and his clique all add gems onto their robes. He likes for him and his pals to have a distinct, iconic appearance when compared to everyone else. And Constantine getting blinded would mean an even more distinct and iconic appearance that wouldn't necessarily cost his skill or respectability
Overall, I've thought about this character more than anybody else alive and also I didn't mention this in the main body of the post but the reveal that he hadn't been permanently blinded was so anti-climactic I mean come on.
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finished the wicked king today!!
will be taking a small gap between it and the queen of nothing but my non spoiler thoughts are i enjoyed it and that i keep forgetting cardan is not blonde (idk why i just find and replace his hair colour every time it's mentioned - i know he has dark hair he just gives me blonde vibes idk)
spoilery thoughts under the cut:
kay the sex scene was not what id expected (i have an irl who mentioned to me that there was a sex scene in the book but i thought it was going to be more graphic because of her)
so glad it was fade to black though because the moment the TAIL was mentioned i could not take it seriously
the wedding into the big twist at the end was my favourite part though like it really brought this book up in my ranking because even though i wasn't hugely surprised at cardan betrayal i thought it was executed really well
anyway read the notes if you want for nonsensical ramblings lmao
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