#i might try to do a full playthrough or at least a complete keep save

[bosspigeon]

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

P5R Random Thoughts #1

(I'm doing a blind playthrough btw please no spoilers if you can help it!!)

I was thinking about Joker's initial transformation into his thief outfit and how he can't seem to hold it, implying his resolve is still weak. Then I think about how, when he and Ryuji entered the Palace the second time, he was able to, and suddenly, I'm not buying the people who call Joker a blank-slate protagonist.

I recognize I'm still very early in the game and I understand there's variation with what you choose to do and say and whatnot, but... there is a character there, and it's not even all that subtle.

See, Joker's awakening took... a long time. And most of that was other people bombarding him with continuous questions: "Are you going to leave him?" "Are you running away?" And ultimately, his own voice from within: "Is what you did really wrong?"

And one of the options to the last question is, surprisingly enough, "It might have been..." Now, I didn't pick that option, but the fact that it was there is interesting in the first place, because he clearly doesn't really think it was wrong to get involved, but the events that happened to him after the fact all happened so quickly that he hasn't even had time to process.

I kept snickering at the way the protagonist really is no thoughts head empty, can't seem to keep a thing inside his brain, and yet... that's actually a bit concerning, though not exactly surprising. He's spent most of the game so far sounding completely disoriented. He didn't even know the name of his school - was he told nothing? Did he just not hear any of it?

I don't know how else to interpret this other than that the arrest and subsequent probation really shook him and now he's kind of... aimless. Directionless, even. He's trying so hard to not draw any more attention to himself and it just isn't working. The experience may have even been traumatic - "it might have been", and the way he consistently gives these noncommittal responses to Ryuji about the castle even though he knows full well they saw the same things indicates to me that Joker, at least at this stage, doesn't trust in himself much to know what the "right thing" is.

So, even though he has all this anger and righteous fury in his heart, even though it was enough to awaken... his spirit of rebellion is still weak. There was only one clear answer in that initial situation - save Ryuji. But after that, it's like he's not sure what his goal should be, or what he should do with himself. But then, the second time they enter, he's able to keep the transformation up - and I'm positive it's because of Ryuji. Joker sees Ryuji's anger and his determination to go help the people trapped in Kamoshida's Palace and suddenly he has no issues. It's fitting for a character whose powers rely on bonding with others. Ryuji's sense of rebellion is already starting to help him direct his own. Because otherwise I don't think he would've really known what to do with himself.

Anyways, maybe I'm just reading too deeply into things. But that's what I do here, isn't it?

Also my boys' standards are so low. "Ryuji doesn't seem like such a bad guy." "Wow, this guy totally wasn't cool with me getting killed in front of him!" Literally they latch onto the first person who's been remotely tolerant of them. They are ride or die now. I love them.

[0daytrick0]

Week 8...?

It's been a wild ride, but I'm nearly there. I am currently drowning in all of the work I have to complete, but the finish line is in sight.

I currently have 5 assessments that I need to start along with one exam to study for - well at least watch the lectures and stay on top of it before the exam.

Full time uni, let me tell you, even with having a flexible job, to maintain consistency and manage your time... It's a hurdle.

I just keep telling myself that it's my first official term at uni and I'm going to struggle with this one. Especially when I'm still finding my feet to figure out what works.

At the moment all I want to do is play fallout 4. It's my third playthrough and I got back into it after watching the show and now studying and working is a whole new level of hard.

But I will get there. I know I will. I just have to keep my head down now and concentrate. There are a whole lot of assessment to create and submit, but having these massive lectures to attend ONLINE, man, it makes it way harder than it needs to be. I cannot sit still for more than 30 minutes. 40 minutes on my good day. To have a 4 hour lecture with no breaks, man... It's just setting me up to fail. Especially when I'm in my own house. Do you realise how many distractions there are here? "There is a mark on my desk, let me clean it. I'll go grab a drink of water, oh wait the dishes need doing. I'll just sit down and make a to do list. Oh wait, not until I vaccume my carpet so I can focus."

I have always struggled with procrastination all through school, but this takes the cake. Even things I enjoy doing such as gaming I can't sit still for. It's crazy man. It took so long for me to be able to sit where I am now. To be able to attend University without worldly stress hurdles. I couldn't even attend my bachelor of psychological science after I graduated as I didn't have enough points. So I had to do an online pathways program for three months. I decided to apply for uni and went the year after that only to nearly end up homeless. So then I came back home, got my own place with my partner, and proceed to apply again but online and I am finally here. Ive made it past census date. And I am here for good now.

It took so long to get here. I was so excited about it too. Couldn't wait for a challenge and commit to a grind. But now that it's here... I'm exhausted. I want to quit. I'm starting to not care. I have little focus. It is fascinating at how the human mind works... Whatever the case may be, I am stuck here and commited either way. So I might as well make the most of it and push myself as far as I can (which is not far at the moment).

In between all of this I am trying my best to have money to pay for bills so it's not all reliant on my partner on top of saving money for my tattoo which has been 4 damn years in the making.

I need AT LEAST 5k to be able to drive there, afford the tattoo, and have money for food and accommodation. It's possible. It most definitely is, even with my studies. But it's the saving part that's the hardest. My god is it hard. When I finally can afford things, I just spend all my money on things I like. Don't get me wrong, it's things I use and have wanted for a while. But damn man, I really have to set my priorities. But a budget book and be strict with myself. Honestly, I need to be strict with myself with everything. Studying, saving, eating, going to the gym. I just really need to change my whole mindset and push myself. It's not about motivation, it's about consistency and building habits.

In other news, I finally bought my dream iPad pro along with the apple pencil. I couldn't afford it outright, and I couldn't justify saving for an iPad when I also want a tattoo. So I ended up using a credit card. Which is dangerous and I always swore to myself I would never do. But! I am only using it to pay off the iPad and will delete it once it's paid off. I have also locked the card and will hide the card away from myself. I will not build debt on appliances.

Right now I am planning out my whole week, dedicating time to the priorities, and making time to work as well as work out. It's going to be a massive week, but if I can just start all of these assessments, it won't be so bad.

[gaminganxious]

Buried Stars - Review

Genre: Visual Novel

Release Date: July 30th 2020

Playtime: 6hrs

Completed: No

Would Play Again?: Yes, I at least want to finish a full playthrough and see how it ends

I swear I let RNG pick this month's games. Why it decided it was sad dark games February is beyond me, but I have to give another heads up here before we git into this one. WARNING: This game deals with themes of death and anxiety. Along with most of the BS that comes from literally any form of social media.

Buried Stars is about a group of contestant singers that become trapped on the set of a game show after disaster occurs. You play as one of five contestants, Do-yoon Han. You'll try your best not to do it and stay sane while hopefully doing the same for the people trapped with you. If being trapped under rubble was enough drama for you, don't worry. Everyone you're trapped with comes with a boatload of their own secrets and agendas to uncover along the way.

I haven't played any before but the art is really good in my opinion. The characters are all well-defined and easily distinguishable from each other, and I don't get bored looking at them for minutes at a time, which is good because thats what you'll be doing most of the time.

The menu interface is dynamic and fits the theme well. I do sort of wish the character models had more than three or four expressions when you interact with them. I think that's something that might be fairly common for this type of game, but still. The music is non obtrusive, but it's also nothing to write home about, which I thought was surprising considering the premise of the story involves singers. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone actually sings in it. They haven't done so in my playthrough so far.

This game combines like three of my worst fears. Being buried alive, talking to people I don't know very well, and social media. I honestly kind of bulked at it when I first started playing and realized I would have to get people to like me. That's something I almost always need a guide for. That and I made the mistake of talking to Hyesung first, and he's a little asshole in the beginning. I toughed it out, though, and I'm glad I did. There's a Quick Save Feature that helps you manage conversations if you feel you're about to touch on an unsavory topic with someone. Or if you want to avoid losing sanity. I mean that literally, by the way. You have a sanity meter, something I completely ignored until it was almost gone. Some topics raise it, others; like investigating that body yall just found in the rubble, lower it. There's also Phater, the games version of Twitter to keep track of, and you will want to keep track of it as it will give you most of your talking points. Sadly, it is just as toxic as it's real life counterpart, so be prepared for that, or it will drop your sanity too. At least it only updates every chapter or so. Controls are super easy and well labeled throughout. There is also a very nice fast-forward option if you had to do a reload and don't want to flip through all the dialog again. 

The story so far is quite good and getting better as I go. I'm excited to see how it'll end, though I'm not sure how close to that I am yet. More than just the main story, though, each individual character has an intriguing backstory to uncover. They even convinced me to to totally hate the crappiest character by far. At least i know why he's a jerk now. I'm sure there are multiple endings based on who trusts you and your sanity level as well. It's a lot of information at first, but since you go over a lot of the info multiple times throughout the story, it's not too difficult to keep track of. It can be easy to get lost on the details if you're not paying attention, though.

Currently, Buried Stars is listed for $44.99 on the Playstation store. I would hold off on that, though. I bought mine a while ago, but I'm pretty sure I got it on sale. It also looks like it goes on sale pretty regularly. If you do find it on sale, I think it's worth grabbing, especially if you like visual novels. You can save almost whenever you want, so it's a good one to play for a bit here and there or shotgun over a few days if you prefer. 

[showyoumyfavoriteobsession]

WELL.

I just finished my first playthrough and like. holy shit. I'm still kind of reeling bc even though I think I got a "good ending" main story-wise (destroyed the elder brain and all the tadpoles), the companions' epilogues were not as positive!

I fucked up Gale's story at some point - I was trying to romance him, but I also didn't want him to take the crown for himself, and I think I must have picked an option that backed him up at some point thinking I could convince him later. When we got to the epilogue, we just got in an argument and he stormed off to go claim godhood for himself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My (vague) understanding is that each companion has at least two endings? And I did quicksave during that conversation so I may go back and see what happens if I back him up - probably not the ending I was aiming for, but something different at least. I also never got his act 3 romance scene, but I'm not sure if that's because of this or because I started romancing him too late (I didn't get his act 1 scene at the party either).

*Quick edit since I just went back and loaded up that last save: there wasn't anything I could do in that conversation to change the outcome of Gale leaving. I think I must have started his stuff too late, so I couldn't get all the scenes, plus probably a few bad dialogue choices on the way. It's a shame, I really do like Gale and he has an interesting story, and that’s not the way I was hoping to end it (even if I wasn't romancing him).

I didn't actively do very much of Karlach's story (got her stabilized in act 2 and that was about it), but GOD her epilogue scene made me cry like a baby. Saying goodbye to the sun and the ocean... telling herself she did her best... 😭 I'm still feeling unwell about it.

I don't think I would have done anything different on this playthrough for Astarion (helped him kill Cazador and disrupt the ritual) but I did feel bad when he had to go scrambling away from the sunlight. I'm planning to romance him for an evil playthrough so I might just go full evil and let him complete the ritual then - we'll see.

But overall I really really loved this game! Absolutely one of the biggest, most captivating experiences I've had in a game. I understand why people are upset about the abruptness of the epilogue, but (at least for now) it really didn't bother me. I think if it were much longer, it would have felt like it was dragging, especially when you have a lot of emotional scenes one after the other - I think they erred on the correct side. The story felt so detailed and interwoven and compelling and still managed to be... manageable. Understandable and relatively easy to keep track of, despite being both sprawling and deep. The script and the acting elicited a huge amount of emotional reactions from me all the way through the game - this has taken me about a month, mostly playing a couple hours each evening, and I was still laughing at the dialogue and cringing at my bad rolls and invested in battles almost every time I booted up the game. That was a pretty cool feeling.

It's wild to me that every time I watch other people play this game, they're always finding things that I never found - there's just so. much. game. I expect any subsequent playthroughs will go a good bit faster; eventually I'll probably just watch parts that I'm curious about instead of playing through it over and over with slight changes, but I am curious to do at least one more playthrough with a very different approach to see how different the game becomes. I'm going to be thinking (and posting lol) about this for a while.

Oh! Randomly, I feel like I should mention that I played the whole game on the easiest mode and it was great. This is the first CRPG I've ever played, I have very little experience with turn-based combat or DnD, and I wanted to keep having fun! It was still plenty challenging - there were still a couple times that my whole team died, it's certainly not a story-only mode - but it ended up being perfect for my play style.

[yeahhiyellow]

19, 22 and 23? :^)

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

Tbh there are a lot of things I hate, although by this point it's only very certain parts of the fandom that have these problems, since most of the shitty people have lost interest by this point. If I had to choose just one thing though, it'd be the overwhelming focus on white, male characters over female and/or characters of color. And there are a lot of areas where this shows up. One major example is that a lot of people like the idea of Connor, Hank, Gavin, and Nines (all white, male characters, mind you) staying at the DPD even after:

The DPD was the one (along with Cyberlife) responsible for the deaths, arrests, and brutal treatment of androids, the main oppressed group in the game's world

Connor and Nines are a part of that oppressed group, and at least Hank is shown in game to support them

Connor has already worked at the DPD and was routinely called an "it" (which as someone who is nonbinary and has been called "it" knows how insulting that can be and understands the need to get away from situations where that happens), was allowed to be sent to his death by, and was routinely harassed and nearly murdered, or in some playthroughs actually murdered, by workers at the DPD (*ahem Gavin ahem*)

Hank (if he is your friend) risked his career just to cause a distraction for Connor to keep him alive

Just because the android revolution was successful doesn't mean the DPD was going to follow that. I mean, the androids were heavily compared to African Americans in this game, and we all know how the current police system treats them (and if you don't, pay attention to the news, like, ever. Also read Jim Crow as that book is very informative on the oppression of blacks in the entire incarceration system as well as before and after that)

So I hope it would be pretty obvious to any sane person that suggesting these characters would join/remain in the DPD after everything is offensive on all sorts of levels.

In addition to that, you also have some people saying that they only cared about Connor's story, or that his was the only good one. The female protagonist that risks her own life several times to save that of a child (no matter if she is human or android)? Not important. The (half) black protagonist who is shot by police, has to rebuild himself, and leads his own people to freedom? Who cares? The only important story to these people is the white, male, cop android who spends most of his time hunting down the good guys. And if some people honestly prefer Connor's story because of their own reasons, that's fine. And yes, Kara and Markus's stories have lots of problems. But Connor's does too, and none of this gives people an excuse to ignore the other characters, especially since they are the minority characters. Then, there are also the people who say Connor's machine path was better than his deviant path, or that him being replaced by Nines in the end was unfair. And... what the fuck??? I mean, I get it, it's fun to play through different options, and Connor is hella badass in the machine path. But he is also hella badass in the deviant path (killing the guards in the elevator, possibly the team at the bottom if he doesn't catch the security camera, fighting Sixty, walking in front of all the androids he freed, like, come on), and he also, like, has morals and isn't oppressive??? In the machine route, he kills his own people, including those who just want to be free and might have been completely pacifist the entire way through. So I'm sorry, anyone who thinks his machine path is better is just looking for an excuse to be oppressive without openly admitting it.

Then there's the Gavin apologizers. While fanon Gavin is awesome, some people have way overstepped the line of redemption and allowing oppression. I've seen posts defending Gavin's in-game behavior, just because he refers to androids as "he" on occasion. This is despite:

Suggesting "roughing up," or being violent to Shaolin (the HK400 in "The Interrogation")

Insulting his partner, Chris, when he doesn't forcibly move Shaolin against Shaolin's will

Pointing a gun at Connor after Connor rightfully says to stop touching Shaolin for both succeeding the mission and for Shaolin's sake, and only stepping down after Hank points a gun at him and even after insults Connor

Punching Connor right in the thirium pump regulator and then pushing his head right where his LED is in the break room if Connor refuses to get him a coffee

Insulting and threatening Connor in the same scene even if Connor follows all of his demands

Insulting Hank's alcoholism in the Eden Club "it's starting to stink of booze in here"

Purposely pushing Connor to the side in the same scene

Trying to literally murder Connor and admitting he'd wanted to kill him ever since he first saw Connor, sometimes successfully

Both physically and verbally assaulting Connor

I forgive very easily and strongly believe in redemption, don't get me wrong. But trying to excuse Gavin's behaviors is so inexcusable, especially when most of his aggressions are towards androids, the oppressed minority.

Now, let's look at Ao3, shall we? Let's see how many fics posted there are with each of the "main" (including Gavin and Nines since even though they are not main characters in canon they are in fanon) characters... (also, keep in mind, I gathered this data about a month ago so it might not be completely up to date):

Connor: 16,150

Markus: 5,395

Kara: 1,504

Hank: 13,135

Nines: 9,807

Gavin: 9,939

Amanda: 1,177

Chloe: 1,521

North: 3,056

Simon: 3,192

Josh: 1,965

Alice: 1,098

Luther: 848

Rose: 193

This means that certain characters get unequal amounts of attention:

White: 59,042

Black: 9,578

Male: 60,431

Female: 8,549

White, Male: 52,223

White, Female: 7,179

Black, Male: 8,208

Black, Female: 1,370

Well, this says a lot. Now, some people reading this might realize that there are more white and male characters to begin with, so it could be fair even with their numbers being higher. So, okay, let's see the average amount of works a single character in each of the above categories would have (so divide each of the values by the number of characters in that category) (also I rounded to the tenth place aka first decimal point):

White: 6,560.2

Black: 1,915.6

Male: 7,553.9

Female: 1,424.8

White, Male: 10,444.6

White, Female: 1,794.8

Black, Male: 2,736

Black, Female: 685

If anything, these are even more telling. And if you don't believe me, look on Ao3 and calculate these yourself, because you'll get the same thing.

To be clear, I don't have anything against Connor, Hank, or any of the white and/or male characters. I even like the way that the fandom has redeemed Gavin. But the fandom has not done the same job of redeeming other characters, especially the minority ones, and pays way less attention to them, and that needs to be called out with evidence by someone.

Anyway, I spent a LONG time on that first question, so I'll try to make the next answers shorter!

22. Popular character you hate?

There aren't any popular characters that I thoroughly hate. The only characters I hate are ones that are already highly unpopular (Todd, Zlatko, Perkins). If we're talking canon characters, I do hate Gavin with a flaming passion. I mean, he is meant to represent police brutality. But fanon Gavin is cool with me, so I'm not sure exactly how much this counts.

There is one semi-popular character that I dislike though, and that is Kamski. I'm half-counting him again because within the fandom there are very mixed opinions. I personally dislike him mainly because of his treatment of one of his Chloe's: he is willing to let her get shot in the head and killed just to find a dumb answer to his Kamski test just because he feels like it. If Connor doesn't shoot Chloe, he tells Connor he's deviant, knowing full well that Amanda and Cyberlife are watching being the one to design the program, endangering Connor. While he arguably is responsible for deviancy and wants androids to succeed, that doesn't make up for those facts.

Another character that half-counts is Daniel. There are mixed opinions within the fandom on him as well, with some arguing that he is only wanting to not get replaced and protect himself. However, since his first response was to kill the dad, and then he proceeded to shoot at least 3 more cops, killing 2, and hold Emma, the young girl he had been friends with for years hostage, even though she had nothing to do with his replacement. You can't argue that he didn't want to kill Emma and only used her as protection for himself, either, as there are multiple endings where he tries and sometimes succeeds in killing Emma, even when he is also killing himself. I'm not closed to a redemption arc for him, but his in-game actions are inexcusable. He's the one deviant who truly has no valid defense for his actions.

23. Unpopular character you love?

There are a few. I absolutely adore North, Josh, Adam, and Alice, even though the fandom has conflicted opinions on them. Then again, none of these characters are really considered unpopular, just not as popular as others with a select few that don't like them. With North, I've been in this fandom since a few months after its release, when there was a lot of North hatred, and was actually in a group called the North Protection Squad lol. However, now most people like her, and she's really grown in popularity. With Josh, it's less that he's hated, and more that he's ignored. People say that Simon was the peaceful option when he was really the neutral, and recently I've seen more people against Josh's opinions on the revolution. While I don't always agree with Josh being so passive and undemanding (neither do I agree with North's violence), he's still an awesome character with some very valid points. Then, I do understand why some people dislike Adam, as at first he's against androids and almost reveals Kara and the others. However, if you meet him at the border crossing, he apologizes to Kara and changes his mind, promising to help androids. While he may start out scared and not on the right side, he does have a good heart and ends up making the right decisions in the end. With Alice, I haven't seen many people hate her, either, although I have seen some saying she's annoying and lacks a personality. I agree that she lacks a personality, although I argue that's the writers' faults rather than her character's (as are problems with other characters, I mean David Cage wrote this so what were we expecting). I also don't think she's annoying, as after all she is only 9 (in human terms), doesn't admit she's an android because she's scared Kara will reject her (and Kara actually can reject her for being an android, leaving her completely on her own in a world that wants her dead. Also, living her whole life with Todd can absolutely not help her feel more secure with who she is or make her trust Kara to still love her for it), and she is only cold and feels sick because her model of android is literally designed to replicate human sickness and discomfort (and it's clear she doesn't know how to turn them off, because even after Kara knows she's an android Kara still has to help Alice not feel cold anymore. Also, this is November in Detroit, in which the average temperature is 42°F (5.6°C). There are also scenes where it is snowing, meaning the temperature is below freezing. Still, despite the temperatures, in some scenes not having a coat, and feeling sick, she says Kara and Luther can't stop because of her, risks her life to save Kara's if you fail QTEs, and says she's "fine" even when she's cold to comfort Kara. So if you think she can be annoying, yeah, all 9-year-olds can be. But if you think she's annoying enough to actually hate her, idek what to say).

In terms of characters that are really unpopular, I actually like Leo. His actions at first are inexcusable. I mean, accusing Carl of loving an android more than hin, insulting Markus and treating him as less than human, threatening him, breaking into Carl's house and attempting to steal his paintings for drug money, and framing Markus for Carl's death leading to him getting shot and nearly killed are obviously not okay things to do. However, he is clearly on drugs, specifically red ice, the most dangerous drug in the world. Also, if you decide to push Markus leading Carl to still be alive, when you return to Carl's house, you can find a message Leo sent to Carl in which he apologizes for everything and promises it won't happen again. In the extras section, you also find out Carl missed out on Leo's whole childhood, only first meeting him once he was much older. Given that Carl spends all of his days pleasantly conversing with Markus while ignoring Leo, not calling him, only talking to Leo once he comes around himself, and doesn't even argue when Leo says Carl doesn't love him, it's almost fair that Leo thinks the way he does. Since he's also high on drugs throughout the story, at least up until Markus gets shot, we also know that the Leo we see isn't the real Leo. Later, if Carl is dead and Markus visits his grave, he encounters Leo again. This time, when Leo sees Markus he is only shocked. Now, off of red ice, not only is he going to see Carl's grave, expressing love for his father, he also doesn't try to hurt Markus, insult him, or anything mean or dehumanizing. His expression lacks any signs of aggression. It was only when he was high that he was such an asshole. Although that doesn't excuse his behavior, it does give a reason for it, and by the end I consider him redeemed.

~~~

Wow... that was a long response to a very short ask. No need to read all that (although I would highly suggest reading my first answer, at least, since that does contain some very relevant points). Although then again, if you've made it here, you've probably already read all that. In which case I would love to hear your opinions if you're willing to share (as well as anyone who sees this!) I guess I just had a lot of opinions that I needed to put out in the world lol, so thank you sm for the ask!!!!! 💛💛💛

[bouncyballcitadel]

Chapter 6 Messages!

Sorry for being super late on this, but here’s a compilation of all the messages I’ve gotten about Chapter 6. Thank you so much for sending these in--I love you all very much! :)

Under the cut to prevent it from being a giant block of text lol

I have an online exam in an hour and playing the updated game really help me relax well sort of since that surgery scene kinda makes me nervous like holy shit Anyway the update is AHMAZING! I really love it(♡ω♡ ) ~♪

Hehe, I’m glad I managed to capture (even if just a little bit) how nerve-wracking surgery can be…especially when something goes wrong. Hope your exam went well!

Ho dear lord, the update was amazing to much adrenaline for me 😭 thank you so much bouncy for your hard work !

HAHA, what’s Citadel without your heart pounding every chapter (from drama or from the ROs)?

Hi!! I love the new update! I was wondering if it’s impossible to be on time to surgery with Dr. Grey if we eat with Jean? I tried not even asking Jean anything and I was still late lol

Unfortunately, if you decide to eat with Jean you’ll always be late to the surgery. Just wanted to capture some of the very real trade-offs in medicine hehe

me, having to reload a save every time i answer a question incorrectly or do the wrong thing during the surgery: ah shit, here we go again 🧍

Even Dr. Grey and Vic aren’t immune to time travel hehe

Hello! Chapter 6 is AMAZING we love the surprise drop and I think I"m in love with everyone in this game. Small potential error report? When talking to Eli at the vending machine, it reads "She expression is so gentle". Okay thank you

Ah, thank you for sending me the error! Will fix this in the Chapter 6 soft update. 

oh my god that chapter !!! I don't remember the last time I was so immersed in a story. somehow i didn't mess up (sure twice or thrice it was pure luck with guesswork but shh) other than uhhh passing out bc who needs nutrition (the moment with Eli was worth it) ...... making mistakes on my second playthrough on purpose made me feel so bad for my poor second MC the poor guy has a pure heart but embarrassed himself so badly (at least HE didn't pass out tho....)

LOL! I love how you played your two MCs completely differently haha! At least Vic gave you orange juice if you passed out. 

Really enjoyed the new chapter! Specially the Uhmm walking on pins and needles around Vic and *twirls hair* eyeing their biceps and Yk faceplanting at the end of surgery 😣 but is okay because I know big scary attending isn’t that scary. Those big strong arms *will* cradle (1) overworked intern one day. Also as someone who knows zilch of medicine, the surgery stuff was fun play through!

Yay, I’m glad you enjoyed the surgery sequence! One of my goals was to balance between keeping it medically realistic but also engaging to the reader. And, yes, Vic…as Marsha said in Chapter 6, “Big, bad chief. I see right through you.” ;) 

Ok just now playing that Eli / Davy tension and it is *chefs kiss*. MC ready to board the workspouse train and Eli having their lil texting anxiety? Author you are evil 😌 also I the player haven’t chosen a first route yet so my MC is just the biggest hoe rn, anyone in scrubs will be pined and flirted with, and I kinda love it 😆

Tbh, that’s me whenever I play a choice game so you have my full support. Lol, sneaking in little jealous Eli tidbits is one of my favorite parts of writing Citadel. ;)

Where were Vic's big strong arms to catch me when I passed the fuck out? Also, damn you for making me pay attention? I'm a speed reader so I miss little details like ages and stuff.

-cackles- 

Unfortunately, Vic’s big strong arms were busy sowing up Ms. Lin’s abdomen, but maybe one day, eh?

What kinda weak sauce intern are we? Huh? You skip lunch and just drink coffee for breakfast and then pass out? Punk bitch. I haven't eaten in two days and I only feel a little like I'm gonna pass out. I could beat MC in a fight confirmed. (/j)

LMAO, please nourish yourself. Bwahaha, probably my favorite option in the “try not to pass out sequence” is “summon all willpower and force yourself not to pass out.” It’s hilarious when that doesn’t work. 

me eying the mental health bar like 🙃

This will become very relevant in Case 3…

does mc faint in the surgery room specifically because they didn’t eat enough or do they faint no matter what? if it’s the former, will the mc’s eating habits continue to be noted throughout the game or was it just a one time thing? i really enjoy that taking care of yourself, and consequently not doing so, has an actual impact on the character and story, if that’s the case

The MC will faint or not faint depending on how many “snack points” you rack up (hint: you have to make very specific decisions to get enough snack points, sometimes at the expense of other stats in the game). This will probably be a one time thing, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be little stat checks like this in the future that might have major consequences on your reputation. ;)  

[curechocolattymilk]

TES V OC Thingie

[Got tagged by @jessaryss​ ! ]

Pause your game! Wherever your OC is in their game currently, tell me about their story so far.

✧✧✧ General

Current Level: 56

Name: Jeer-Tei Perdes

Name Meaning: Literally got it from a name generator lol. But lore wise it was a name gifted to them in honor of an Argonian who served beside Tei’s mother during the Great War

Pronouns: They/Them

Age: Early 30s where they are story wise???

Race(s): Argonian

Place of Origin: Hammerfell

Pick A Theme Song For Them: oof that's tough... From a Crowded Wound or maybe even Firstwake? If you really played around w personal interpretation/the lyrics that is haha

✧✧✧ Locations

Where Did You Begin Their Game?: Argonian Assemblage, Windhelm (Alternative Start)

Where Are They Currently In Your Game?: Whiterun

What Are They Doing There?: Just finished attending a party held in their honor (Post Blood of Kings)

Homes?: Breezehome, Proudspire, Lakeview & Autmnwatch

# of Locations Discovered?: 274

Dungeons Cleared: 104

Misc. Quests Completed: 87

Favorite Areas and/or Locations: Falkreath / Lakewview Manor. Both areas are where Tei heads off to in order to collect their thoughts/feel some sense of calm.

✧✧✧ Main Quest

Are They Dragonborn / Do They Know It At This Point?: Yes & yes

How Do They Feel About Being Dragonborn: It's...complicated, being thrust into the role of savior by gods of the Cult, which in turn are followed by the folk who see you lesser than them. Tei already has a dislike towards the Divines, this doesn't really help lol

Main Quests Completed: 21

Where Are They In The Main Story Line: Alduin's dead, currently trying to ignore the Civil War as long as they can before the Empire forces its hand into forcing them to join their ranks

Dragon Souls Absorbed: In total overall? 147. The amount currently stored in Tei? 45

Words of Power Learned: 64

Shouts Mastered: 21

Favorite Shout: Firebreath / Dragonrend

✧✧✧ Combat

Most Used Weapon(s): Daedric war axe OR Dragonbone battle axe. Tei technically has both on them at all times during adventuring, alongside a shield, so which they used depends on the situation/which they grab fastest.

Combat Style: Two/One-handed tank. Main tactic is to rush in, cause as much damage/chaos as possible to shake up the opponent, & clean up what the ranged attackers of the party (usually Rumarin, Inigo and/or Lucien) weren't able to deal with.

Armor Type / Level In It: HEAVY ARMOR BABYYYYY (Level 100 + 35 extra points via enchantments)

# of Training Sessions: 99 in-game, lore wise its a lot of self-teaching/keeping their skills learned from Hammerfell sharp. Some of these are magic but lore-wise this doesn't happen cus Tei is not a magic user, save for shouts. I just did those in-game for exp OR so I can help Lucien raise his magic skills :'D

Who Taught Them?: In-game?? Fuuuck so many npcs. Lore-wise? They learned this from their schooling in Hammerfell, going off the canon-lore that it's p much expected for everyone to have a grasp on combat & weaponry! Though they did learn a few things from Kaidan & Anum-La.

Favorite Enemy Type: Dragons! Despite the fact Tei does not have the best magic resistance, it's one hell of a challenge they love to meet.

Least Favorite Enemy Type: Automatons, because of a bad experience with them as a child. Also Undead, because they were raised not to disturb them & it just feels so wrong having to fight them/go into tombs.

People Killed: 945

Animals Killed: 749 (Hunterborn makes hunting fun lol)

Undead Killed: 766

Automatons Killed: 105

Daedra Killed: 136

✧✧✧ Magic

Favorite School(s): None, actually. Destruction is okay though....they guess

Most Used Spell(s): Firebreath or Dragon Aspect. Tei doesn't consider shouts spells though. It's totally different guys shut up they ain't no smelly mage gods

Spells Learned: 9 in-game, mainly due to the spells you're kinda forced to learn for some quests/the ones you automatically know

Items Enchanted: 19 (Tei technically doesn't enchant, and wont next playthrough for sure I wont give in this time >:[ )

College of Winterhold Quests Completed: 8

Where Are They At In The Questline?: Main quest is done bcus i dont like seeing unfinished quests in my journal lmao. Tei's involvement is completely different from canon though in my take. Moreso was hired as a guard for the expedition & was, unwillingly, dragged into the rest of the mess. Is not offered the Archmage position, that went straight to Tolfdir.

Opinions on Magical Guilds (Arcane University, Winterhold, Psijics, Synod, Radiant Dark, etc.): As they get older, they tolerate the guild & magic users more n more, BUT, Tei grew up in an environment that frowns upon the practice of magic, & it shows. They mainly mistrust necromancers/illusionists & still hold onto that belief that reliance on magic, especially for combat, is a weakness.

Bold words for someone with shit magic resistance.

✧✧✧ Crime

Current Gold: 10,640

How Did They Acquire Their Gold?: Odd jobs, selling a lot of the items they made/harvested from smithing & hunting (jewelers are their go-to hirers bcus Tei is great at getting things like ivory), Dwemer ruin diving (they refuse to loot the tombs), also yknow....being part of the Dark Brotherhood helps

Largest Bounty On Their Head: 11,240

For...?: Unfortunately they did not stand down when they were being falsely accused of murder in Markarth. First time Tei called down dragons (Sahrotaar, specifically, Tei managed to get command of Miraak's dragons post-Dragonborn) to absolutely smite some fools.

Current Bounty: None! They're good at not getting caught/threatening and/or bribing guards. :)

Locks Picked: 15 i think?

Jail Time: 1, Cidhna Mine

Jail Escapes: 1, teamed up w the Forsworn lol

Murders: 28

Assaults: 307....In their defense people keep getting in their way during dragon attacks

Items Stolen: 37, most of them from the nobles of Windhelm

Thieves Guild Quests Completed: N/A (wont be doing this storyline unless i cant find a mod that'll let me get the shouts locked behind it)

Dark Brotherhood Quests Completed: 20

Where Are They At In Those Questlines?: DB is completed main arc wise!

✧✧✧ Relationships

Relationship Status: Married to two lovely fellas

Current Companions: atm? none

Housecarls: Lydia & Rayya

Friends (outside of party): Zora Fair-Child, Inigo, Lucien, Anum-La, Morndas, Aela the Huntress, Nazir, Babette, Scouts-Many-Marshes, Isobel, Madesi

Children: Khash, Chases-Starlight, Ram-Ku. (going of where Tei is now - Otero & Mei come around later on in Tei's story!)

Romantic Interest(s): Kaidan & Rumarin.

Sexual Orientation:

GAY

✧✧✧ Religion

Pantheon: Yokudan, with a hint of Hircine worship in there

Patron Deity(ies): From the Yokudan pantheon: Tei mainly views HoonDing as their main patron, but also prays to/pays respect to Satakal.

They are also Hircine's champion.

Daedric Quests Completed: 3 (Hircine, Vile, Dagon - the last Tei didn't really help, moreso pissed off)

Aedric Quests Completed: 1 if you count the whole Alduin thing I guess?

How Devout Are They?: Tei is rather devout, esp to their Yokudan patrons, praying or making offerings daily. They aren't the type to really push it in your face though, but have no issues answering questions one might have.

How Do They Feel About Talos Worship?: Deep down they acknowledge & admit trying to ban worship is terrible, but....Tei also lets their bias/experience with Windhelm, the Stormcloaks & especially Ulfric kinda cloud over this. If the Nords want their old ways so damn much, why fight for a divine from the Imperial Cult? Why not go back to the actual old ways? No, this isn't about worship, not to the men leading this so-called rebellion, they just needed something other than their racist bullshit to fool the common man into throwing their lives away for the nobles sitting comfortable in their thrones.

Also during their whole thing of getting into their role of dragonborn, they get a bonus 'fuck this dude actually' towards Talos, Ysmir, whatever the fuck he calls himself. (tldr; it sucks but good luck hearing Tei say that fully)

✧✧✧ Politics

Gray-Mane or Battle-Born?: Neither, ask them again they will punch you for the love of Ruptga they get asked that every time they enter Whiterun.

Stormcloaks or Imperials?: Also neither, Tei hates em both n think they can all choke. Unfortunately they were forced to join the latter due to, yknow, calling dragons & causing massive damage in Imperial territories during isolated fits of rage and the group being more aggressive in wanting something in return for "letting it slide"....oops

Opinion on the Thalmor?: Oh absolutely despises them, they loudly complained having to work with them during the CW & would go out their way to disrupt their plans/piss them off. Sneaking was an option they did not take during the Embassy quest, if it helps paint the picture.

Opinion Of Ulfric Stormcloak?: Tei doens't say they hate people often...but they sure as hell hate Ulfric. Again, their experience in Windhelm added to this heavily, how both the Dunmer & Argonians were treated like shit, with no help whatsoever from the Jarl or guards when the local Nords targeted them. It's still up in the air if I keep this for Tei's story, but I have it where they knew Chases-Starlight's parents, who were killed. When Tei went up & demanded justice/an investigation, only to be brushed off because it "wasn't a priority," it completely destroyed what little empathy or hope they had left for Windhelm as a whole.

Opinion of The Empire?: Cowards too weak to continue fighting back against the Thalmor, in their opinion, & holds these views they grew up with even when being strong-armed into aiding them. If anything they're at least attempting to use their influence to hint towards a rebellion against the Thalmor, but the Empire could also full-on dissolve & they could give less of a shit.

Civil War Quests Completed: 0

✧✧✧ Personal

How Are They Doing? Need Some Juice? A Nap? A Hug?: The whole event of Blood of Kings has fucked with their head, to say the least. It's the starting point of Tei's eventual spiral. So uh...yeah they're not sure how they're doing everything they knew about reality was kinda challenged & they don't rlly have anyone to talk to about it so its cool, its fine, its all good.

A nap is probably needed, not sure about a hug theough they're super flinchy rn

Days Past In Game: 196

Hours of Sleep: 846

Food Items Consumed: 1833

How Many Playthroughs Have You Done With This Character: Tei actually is an older character from the 360 days so uh...maybe 5 at most? This playthrough & their S:EC one coming up when the mod releases being the main ones focusing on their story

Overall How's Your Level Of Fun: Alright I would say! I just been stepping away from Skyrim more often lately to avoid burning out from it

Must Have Mods To Play This Character (for story or other reasons): Ordinator, Wintersun Faiths, Immersive Armors, Sarcastic Player Dialogue, 3DNPC, Inigo, Lucien Flavius, Kaidan 2, Khash the Argonian, Alternative Start, Leviathan Animations, Beast Race Body Paints, Beast HHBB, Apocalypse Magic, Deadly Dragons, Growl: Werewolf Overhaul, Pronouns, uhhh....idk what else without actually listing my current modlist lmao

----

And that's it for Tei! Anyone who wants to do this go on ahead!

[elyvorg]

Later Alligator

Later Alligator is a visual novel indie game with extremely charming character design and animation set in a world of anthropomorphic alligators. It’s primarily goofy and humorous, which isn’t precisely the kind of game I’d have sought out on my own, but it is the kind of game I’ll happily sit through and enjoy if a Let’s Play channel I already follow happens to do a playthrough of it, so that’s a thing that I did. Upon said playthrough recently finishing, I found myself having some Thoughts about the story, particularly the true ending, to the point that I figured I might as well get them out somewhere.

The game begins as your player character arrives in Alligator New York City one morning, where in a hotel lobby you find another alligator named Pat. He seems very nervous and hesitant to talk to you at first, until he suddenly gives in and starts spilling his soul to you because you have a trustworthy face. (A face that you can’t actually see yourself because the game is in first person.) It seems like Pat does this spilling-his-soul-to-strangers thing a lot, because he thinks he accidentally let slip some kind of secret to someone at some point and now his family is going to rub him out in what they’re calling an “event” this evening, which is why he’s so nervous. Looks like this impulsive dork was unfortunate enough to be born into a gangster family that he really doesn’t belong in? Since he trusts you, though, Pat asks you to go and talk to his family to find out more details about the “event” and maybe convince them to not actually murder him.

You apparently don’t have anything else to be doing that day, so you proceed to go around the city talking to the many members of Pat’s very large family, helping them with their various problems in minigame form so that they’ll maybe spill a few details about this super-secret “event” involving Pat tonight. As you do, it very quickly becomes clear that, A, Pat’s family really doesn’t seem very gangster-ish at all, and B, this “event” sounds more like some kind of surprise party. And, oh yeah, Pat offhandedly mentioned it was his birthday today in your first conversation with him. His family’s almost certainly just throwing him a surprise birthday party, but Pat somehow got the wrong end of the stick with their vague hints and got convinced they were going to assassinate him instead. Silly Pat.

But the more of Pat’s family you meet, the more it becomes overwhelmingly apparent that not only are his family not remotely gangsters, but… they all really love him? Sure, everyone in his family is weird and quirky and eccentric in one way or another – it’s that kind of game – but they’re all generally nice people and think Pat is a great guy who’s fun to hang out with (well, there’s a few bad eggs, but they’re just self-absorbed and don’t have any malice towards Pat). How could Pat ever actually have thought any of these people would want to hurt him?

You meet up with Pat a few times throughout the day, as he keeps wanting to have his new friend help reassure him through his nerves about the whole totally-getting-super-murdered-today thing. In one of these meetings, your character implicitly tells him “this event really just sounds like a surprise party”, and Pat insists, “no, that’s just what they want you to think, they’re definitely trying to kill me, keep investigating!” It starts to become clear that Pat’s not just acting nervous today in particular because he thinks he’s going to be killed – he’s always nervous and anxious and paranoid, and that’s why his brain’s convinced him with absolutely zero proof that his family, who clearly think the world of him, are out to get him. Poor guy!

But at least Pat has you, this kind stranger who decided to take on his problems and with whom he can feel a little bit safer and find it a little easier to believe things might be okay. In the evening, you lead him to the room where the “event” is taking place to help ease his fears, and he’s adorably delighted when he sees that it really is a birthday party all for him and no-one is trying to kill him even a little bit dead. A couple of his family members mention that he pretty much freaks out like this every year (suggestion, guys: maybe you should stop making it a surprise and just outright tell him he’s getting a party to help him be less paranoid about it). But this year Pat’s freakout wasn’t quite as bad as usual, thanks to you being there to help and reassure him. Aww.

Pat invites you to join in the photo with all of the people who made it to the party (for some reason, only the family members whose minigames you’ve completed will be there, which I guess is to give you incentive to replay in order meet them all and see the full photo). This comes with the neat twist of having a character-creation feature at the end of the game, as you get to decide on your own alligator features at last just before being in the photo. So rather than just picking what best represents your actual self in alligator form, you’ll probably be picking whatever features you think fit the kind of person you seem to have been playing as in the game, based on the comments of everyone you’ve talked to, especially Pat.

And you taking part in the family photo as Pat’s newest friend implies he considers you one of his family now too (after all, a couple of the people you met weren’t actually related to him but were still invited to the party just out of being a friend of his). It is all in all a very wholesome and lovely game about helping this guy through his anxieties, and his big eccentric family that loves him anyway, now including you. Pat is a precious adorable goof who deserves the best birthday party and as much support with his anxiety and paranoia as his family and friends can give him.

Then, if you’ve met every single family member, there’s a true ending. The “event” really being a birthday party barely counts as a plot twist because it’s so obvious, but the true ending is an actual legitimate surprise, so this is your last chance to stop reading if this has made you want to play the game for yourself.

…

Turns out, someone really was out to kill Pat that day, and that someone was you. You are actually an assassin that, through some comedic coincidences and misunderstandings, Pat accidentally hired to kill himself on his birthday.

That’s why you came to this town today. That’s perhaps even why you decided to spend your day talking to Pat’s family and getting information about the “event”; you probably assumed one of them was the one who hired you to kill him and were trying to find out who it was. The whole time Pat was relying on you to stop his family from totally-super-murdering him, and wanting your company to help ease his nerves about it, you were quietly planning on killing him yourself and he never had a clue. Apparently you were so good at hiding your intentions and appearing trustworthy to Pat, to the point that he impulsively spilled his soul to you at the beginning and continued to trust you throughout – but he never should have believed in you at all.

At the end of the party, you approach Pat alone on a balcony, and as he turns to greet you with a big smile, you push him over the railing… only to have an extremely sudden change of heart and catch him as he falls.

…So, obviously I am very on board with the concept of your assassin-gator protagonist (for whom I’m now going to switch to third-person pronouns because it turns out they’re their own character and not just an extension of the player) not actually wanting to kill Pat any more. But I don’t think the way this moment plays out quite works to properly sell their change of heart, not when it only happens all of a sudden once they’ve already pushed him to his death. If they had grown to feel unwilling to kill Pat, that’s something that would have gradually happened over the course of the day as they spent time with him and his family. Given that, if by this point they didn’t truly want to kill him deep down, I don’t think it works that the protagonist could even have brought themselves to carry out the act and push Pat off the balcony in the first place (especially not when he’s looking at them with a huge excited “hey it’s my new friend!!!” smile). I can see them approaching him, intending to do it, telling themselves they’ve just got to finish the job they came to do, but not actually being able to go through with it and physically take an action that should have ended his life.

This moment could have happened differently to sell it better. Imagine if, instead of going to push Pat off the balcony, the protagonist pulls out their knife (the knife that had always been vaguely visible inside the briefcase menu screen, and that they’d pulled out of nowhere in one of the minigames for what seemed like the kind of non-sequitur gag that this game is full of but was actually foreshadowing!)… but then they hesitate, staring at the knife, their hand perhaps beginning to shake. Then Pat turns around to greet them and freaks out so spectacularly over seeing them looming ominously over him with a knife that he falls backwards off the balcony – and the protagonist unthinkingly throws their knife aside and rushes to catch him. That way, they’re still saving Pat from themselves to seal the change of heart, but they didn’t deliberately begin to kill him before that and make the change of heart seem inappropriately sudden.

So, well, I’m basically trying to pretend that that’s how that scene actually played out, because I am otherwise finding myself rather invested (totally not for any reason that some of the people who follow me will be aware of) in this implicit story of an assassin who gradually realises that they really don’t want to kill their target at all. Based their office that we see, the protagonist very much appears to be what I like to call a “responsibly-sourced assassin” who willingly chose that profession for themselves, which you’d think would mean they were truly unfeeling and heartless and had no qualms about doing murders for a living. But clearly they do have a heart of gold somewhere in there.

This is probably me totally overthinking this largely-comedic game at this point, but: because of this, I headcanon that the protagonist got wrapped up in some really bad stuff in their past that led to them thinking they were a horrible person who was only good at murdering people and deciding they might as well give up on trying to be better and just do that for a living. They’re also evidently very good at appearing like a decent and trustworthy person on the surface, but they’d tell themselves that’s just deception so that they can more easily gather information for a hit, and definitely not because somewhere deep down they actually are capable of being a good person if they tried.

It’s also fun to think in a bit more detail about exactly how the protagonist had a change of heart. One could imagine it’s just down to Pat and his family being such lovable goofs, but on the other hand that’s the kind of thing that a professional killer would have trained themselves to block out and not let themselves be affected by, so I don’t think that alone would be enough. Maybe instead it’s got more to do with the sheer irony of the fact that Pat is genuinely paranoid that his family, who are lovely and would never hurt him and clearly deserve his trust, are out to kill him – and yet at the same time he’s blindly trusting this complete stranger who actually literally is plotting to kill him. Perhaps it weighs on the protagonist’s mind more and more over the course of the day that they don’t deserve Pat’s belief in them, especially not when he finds it so hard to even believe in the people who actually love him, to the point that the protagonist starts to wish that they were someone that Pat could believe in, that if only he could be right to do so after all.

There’s also the fact that this true ending – complete with an achievement called “Save Pat” – is something you only get when you’ve met every single member of Pat’s family. Which kind of implies that… if you don’t, the protagonist actually does kill Pat and doesn’t catch him at the last second? If so, the difference is probably less down to the last few family members having influenced the protagonist’s change of heart that significantly in and of themselves, and more down to the idea I mentioned earlier that maybe the protagonist was mostly talking to them all to try and figure out which one hired them to kill Pat. As long as they haven’t met absolutely everyone, there’s always the possibility that one of the remaining people they missed is the person who wanted Pat dead. So maybe with that in mind, the protagonist can continue to tell themselves that they’re just doing their job and carrying out their client’s wishes, and really Pat’s death is not on their hands and is just the fault of the person who hired them and wanted him dead. But if they’ve met the entire family, then there’s absolutely no denying that nobody wants Pat dead at all. With that, the protagonist can no longer hide from the fact that the only actual bad person with murderous intent here this whole time has been themselves – and maybe that’s what causes them to realise that they don’t want to be that person any more.

Pat reflects in the true ending, after the protagonist has not-killed him and he’s invited them to his house the next morning, that they essentially saved him from himself. He almost seems to think his own paranoia and conviction that people were out to kill him is to blame for accidentally hiring someone to actually do it. This is apparently why he seems so weirdly not-traumatised about the part where the only person he did trust was the one who actually was plotting to kill him for most of the day. You’d think that would’ve made him feel like his paranoia is justified and therefore make him more paranoid, if anything, no matter how sure he is that the protagonist doesn’t want to kill him any more. Instead, though, Pat frames it as “the only one out to get me was me”, not putting any of the blame on the protagonist for hiding their true intentions from him all day and being the one to almost act on that supposed self-destructiveness of his.

But… if Pat really does think his own paranoia is to blame for this, he’s wrong. The exact amusingly ludicrous coincidence that caused this was Pat sneezing jam onto an ad in the paper for the protagonist’s services (you know, that place where assassins usually advertise) that happened to cover just the right words and letters to change the meaning of the message from “I can kill whoever you need, just give me a description of them” to “I am ill and need help, please give me a description of yourself”. Pat saw this and immediately went “oh no I have to help them!!!” and called them to describe himself in third-person, including mentioning his upcoming birthday, because they said that would help them somehow!  So the only thing to blame for this other than a ridiculous coincidence was… well, partly Pat’s tendency to jump to conclusions and act without questioning things, but also his instinctive kindness towards anyone and everyone, even complete strangers. Not his paranoia!

So, I propose a different overall point of this story. It wasn’t the protagonist saving Pat from himself and his own paranoia; rather, it was the opposite. Through the sheer luck of the coincidence that caused him to make that phone call, his tendency to sometimes jump to overly-trusting conclusions instead of overly-paranoid ones, and his and his family’s general goodness, Pat saved the protagonist from themselves. He led them to realise that they could be better than they thought they were and didn’t have to or want to kill people for a living any more.

It’s not mentioned at all in the ending, but I firmly headcanon that the protagonist quits the murder business altogether from that day onwards and becomes just another member of Pat’s family: that one who incidentally used to be an assassin but changed their mind about it thanks to a combination of some unlikely coincidences and Pat just being a good guy. That’s exactly the right flavour of silly eccentricity that’d make them fit in perfectly with the rest of those goofs.

[secretsfromwholecloth]

Dragon Age: Origins (and DLCs), day 14.

The more time I spend with them, the more I enjoy Nathaniel and Sigrun’s dynamic, and the more I find myself thinking about what might have been if this had been a full-length game. (For starters, perhaps he could’ve had something to say about her quest, and perhaps they could’ve had the “broke ain’t the same as poor” conversation and touched on where the limits of his ability to relate to her experience are.)

Right, Fade time.

Isaura is constitutionally incapable of not responding to the First’s bombastic declarations with snark, yes.

Velanna, I swear to fucking God. Running off to melee two desire demons on your own is not what I keep you around for.

Who are you trying to impress, Velanna? Pretty sure your boyfriend will be happier if you stay by him and toss him the occasional heal, honestly.

OK, I spent about two and a half DAA playthroughs yelling at Nathaniel, then once I stopped worrying about him Anders and Velanna both discovered a newfound love for camping out in melee range. This is my life, apparently. Trying to remind ranged companions that they are not, in fact, invulnerable tanks, because they keep forgetting.

Hello, Justice. Been a while.

That went fairly well. Velanna even behaved. Mostly. (Nathaniel spent most of the fight within melee range of at least one ash wraith, but I’ve given up worrying about him. Velanna, heal your boyfriend, will you?)

Now, who gets dropped? Sigrun and Velanna are both expendable. That said, I’m happiest in melee, so I think Justice/Nathaniel/Velanna is the best choice for now.

Whoo, Sentinel armor! I felt a little bad about not giving the Hirol’s Defense set to Sigrun, but now I can. Once we get done here and head back to the Vigil, anyway. And enjoy the Juggernaut set, Justice. Until and unless I decide to give you the Stormchaser set instead, I’m still waffling about that.

Nothing like standing pensively and having a sedate conversation while everyone’s on fire. :D Well, everyone except Isaura, who was either out of range or just has too high a fire resistance score.

Now that Justice is in the party for proper, he’s wasted no time getting judgmental. Consider maybe toning it down eventually, buddy. No? Oh. Okay.

So, think this level 31 party can handle the Queen of the Blackmarsh? I do. Let’s give it a try.

I’ve stopped worrying overmuch about Nathaniel, but sweetie, you don’t need to be standing under the dragon. Get back behind Isaura and Justice, please.

And yelling “Why aren’t you dead yet?” half a minute into fighting a dragon? Once again, sweetie, I admire your optimism.

...and now you’ve been knocked out. This is why I tell you these things, Nate. Fine, just give Isaura a second to get a lyrium potion in her and she’ll give you a revive.

Good thing Velanna finally decided to behave, or I’d be completely driven to distraction.

Again, Nathaniel? Ugh, just wait, we’ve almost got this dragon.

There we go! One nice dead dragon. Well, re-dead. It was clearly some kind of ghost, from the looks of it.

And Oghren’s quest is finally done. Thank you, Oghren.

Now to bang out Justice’s and drop off some stuff in Amaranthine before we start the endgame.

Justice’s line about envying what Kristoff and Aura had, juxtaposed with a romanced Anders’ line in DA2 about Justice apparently disapproving of his “obsession” with Hawke. Hmm.

Poor Aura.

So Anders puts forth the theory that demons are “simply spirits with unique and sparkling personalities”, gets smacked down by Justice, then passes along the smackdown to Merrill when she espouses a similar view in DA2. Given everything we’ve learned, how reliable a narrator is Justice here?

Justice sure does get defensive when insisting that he has no desires. Hmm.

And here’s the love bug again, this time with Justice. Look, I knew Isaura had some sparkle to her and was good at drawing people in, but three companions in love with her? Literally half the party?

Right, I’ve run out of things to do besides the Blight Orphans questline, which I don’t feel like doing, so let’s stash/sell some excess inventory and then start up the endgame.

...of course, the narrator/Statue of War is the same VA as Varel, how did I miss that? Who, like Duncan, will also be dead by the end of the game. Apparently that’s a requirement for DA narrators.

My “Spirit of Narration from the Fade” theory looks more likely by the day.

Anyway. Time to pick my final party. Justice and Nathaniel are obvious, but who gets the free spot? Velanna? Anders? Sigrun, who specifically requested to come along?

You know what, I’ve never had Velanna along before, let’s try her out.

Nice, I’d been saving Nathaniel’s last gift for if I lost approval with him by insisting on saving Amaranthine, but no, he’s still at +100. (Funny, he’s the only companion who made it all the way to 100 this time, but he’s still (Warm) while three companions who are only in the 90s are (Love).)

...and it’d be very nice if you’d stop crashing every time I try to leave the Chantry, game.

*scrème*

Oh, now I lost three points with Nathaniel for letting the messenger go. I’ll save that gift for now, I’ve still got one last decision to make.

The dragon at Drake’s Fall went down fairly easily, though I’m not sure Isaura’s Inferno/Blizzard combo actually accomplished much.

Hello there, Seranni. Goodness. That’s...yeah.

And that crash means I should probably pack it in for the night and finish up tomorrow.

[being-worthy]

The Last of Us Part II – Adding my two cents to the game

Just so we’re clear, let’s establish a few things first:

MAJOR TLOU II SPOILERS AHEAD!!

I also spoiled myself ahead because I needed to know what would happen to Joel and Ellie… and the ending as well.

I’ve played the first one. I liked how it ended and totally support the ending!

I haven’t played the 2nd part but I’m watching the playthrough on YouTube in small doses. My heart can’t take much of it at once lol (and being poor and paying of debt for a loved one is no fun because I don’t have much money to spend on myself).

Right now, I’m at the part where Joel goes with Ellie to the museum for her birthday – it’s so cute and fatherly and my heart can’t take how bittersweet this is …

The 2nd part was rushed and has some bugs that could’ve been avoided, whether you like it or not. That’s a fact and we’re here for the facts not the truth (if you want the truth join a philosophy course).

The parts with Abby are too long, more than what they should’ve been and her vengeance is 💩.

English is not being my first language but I do my best (that’s all I can do).

I’m listening to Bryan Adams and Richard Max while writing this because I’m still not over Joel…

You may voice your opinion but remember this is my space! Be respectful at all times and absolute no hate here!

The first part ended with Joel bringing an unconscious Ellie to the hospital where the last Fireflies are, she almost drowned and he had to perform CPR on her. He’s rendered unconscious too and wakes up on a hospital bed with Marlene and Ethan (the guy who hit Joel in the head with the butt of his rifle) in the room.

That’s when he starts asking where Ellie is and Marlene informs him that she’s not his problem anymore and being prepped for surgery. Here, we need to note the following things: Marlene had sworn to Ellie’s mother to protect and to keep her from harm’s way but TAKES the decision to practically sentence her to death and yeah, she gives a speech that it’s not easy for her either yada yada yada but it’s all bs. The reason why is because:

a)     making a decision refers more to the process and is something that takes time, while taking a decision is the act of deciding something that happens in an instant. Ultimately, Marlene decides for HER!! What about ‘my body, my decision’? Or in this case ‘her body, her decision’? It doesn’t matter if it’s related to an abortion or having your skull opened, the same principle should be applied!

She even says to Joel ‘because this isn’t about me. Or even her. There is no other choice here’. – Firstly, there’s always another choice! Secondly, Joel replies to her saying ‘yeah, you keep telling yourself that bullshit’ and he’s right, it’s total and utter bullshit. Even later on, when he’s carrying Ellie into the parking lot (I believe it was a parking lot), he tells her ‘that ain’t for you to decide’. Again, he’s right. It isn’t Marlene’s decision nor his but Ellie is still unconscious, so what do you want to do? Let them butcher her open? He crossed with her through half the country and ended up caring profoundly for her – she became like a daughter to him. He doesn’t have an on and off switch to turn off his feelings towards Ellie. Moreover, do tell me, if you’d like a doctor or someone else TAKE such a decision for you, instead of waiting for you to wake up and then tell you about the procedure and what this will entail. I get freaking furious whenever someone takes a decision for me or without asking me first.

b)     Neither she nor the doctor wait for Ellie to regain consciousness and since she’s unconscious, they see it as the perfect importunity to just go ahead and rummage in her brain to see if there’s something that could help them developing a vaccine or a cure.

c)     That’s another thing. They had zero guarantees, not even a 0.1 percentage of probability that they’d find something – nothing, nada, zilch. Just a hunch and maybe in an apocalyptic world for some people this might be enough but then why not wait until she wakes up and tell her ‘we don’t know for sure if your immunity will help us finding a cure or a vaccine. So that’s why we need to open your skull and see what makes you immune which ultimately, will kill you’ (in some nicer words though lol). Because they know she might not fully agree with it and they give a sh*t about what she thinks/wants and have that narrow military/cult mindset of ‘a sacrifice for the greater good’ and/or wouldn’t care either way because she’s a kid. I’m no fan of sacrificing one or a dozen people to save billions. If we can’t save them all or at least try our damn hardest, then we’re doing something terribly wrong! Also, she’s a freaking kid!! She hasn’t seen much and has her whole life ahead, doesn’t matter if it’s in the apocalypse. The thought that they’re willing to sacrifice her, a kid, without batting an eye shows me that all Fireflies are terrorists.

d)     Now to the doctor (the one with the scalpel) – according to the internet this guy was Abby’s father and his murder was why she tortured and slaughtered Joel. First things first, every doctor has to take on a Hippocratic oath. There are many different variations but they all come from an old one that states the following:

… I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness, I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favour of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

… If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honoured with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

The doctor doesn’t keep her from harm or injustice, he isn’t even there for her well-being, only to see how her brain ticks. So, that immense violation of his oath doesn’t make him a doctor anymore but a BUTCHER and don’t come to me with ‘but it’s the apocalypse or it’s for the greater good blah blah blah’, then how better are we compared to rapists and people who murder out of fun? If we throw our principles out of the window just because it’s the apocalypse and/or it’s for the greater good, then with all due respect we all should just go ahead and jump from a building and burn in hell.

e)     I got to the part where Joel and Ellie went to the museum for her birthday and at the end there’s a graffiti that says ‘liars’ with the fireflies’ symbol above. Even at the end, their own members saw that they Fireflies were only a bunch full of hot air and nothing else. They ended up being terrorists and forgot what they once stood and fought for.

So, taking all this into consideration - who wouldn’t have saved her? And yes, Joel saves her out of selfishness, so what? True, that he didn’t tell her the truth either, but can you resent him for this? He’d have to tell her that Marlene betrayed her, betrayed her trust and her mother’s trust in her and was willing to let her die and let her body being violated (rape is not the only way to violate someone’s body – FYI). This would have impacted Ellie’s state of mind too. She’d have ended up resenting Marlene and the Fireflies or worse. She had gone through so much already and didn’t need more on her plate. So, he spared her that betrayal and resentment.

Now let’s talk a bit more about Joel. Joel is no saint or hero but no villain either. He’s just a man who was willing to doom the whole already-damned world to protect the girl he adopted. He does what he needs in order to survive but within some reason and hasn’t lost his humanity (it’s just deeply hidden in him), he’s a person trying to survive. He tortures people - yes, but only to get information and makes sure to end them quickly afterwards. I agree that one of the main things you’ve to do during such times, is to adapt or you’ll die or worse. In the 1st part he’s rough, tough, strong, stubborn, resilient, experienced in the world he lives in and wary of strangers (just remember that scene on the highway with the stranger pretending to be hurt and Joel knew from the moment he saw him that it was a trap), someone you don’t want to mess with, etc. On the other hand, there’s this other side of him where he teaches Ellie to swim, tries to joke with her, to play the guitar, takes her to beautiful places, he takes her to a museum with dinosaurs and stuff from space, that proves he’s capable for carrying deeply for someone, in this case Ellie, and don’t get me started on the gift he gives her when they’re in the space capsule (!!), and so on. Ellie and Joel have this great dynamic. Then in the 2nd part, they made him to be so trustworthy toward a young unknown girl, tells her even their REAL names, like he literally says ‘my name’s Joel and that’s my brother Tommy. We live further down’. Dude, why don’t you just go walking around with a banner around your neck stating who you are to the whole freaking world. At some point he even said the name of their home (Jackson)!’ - WHAT THE HOLY F*CK?! He even offered her to go with them and take her to their home and give her supplies. Then, even BLINDLY and WITHOUT ANY WARINESS follows her to a place with an unknown sized group, where he and Tommy don’t know anyone - HOLY FREAKING HELL?! It’s not like it could be a trap, I mean it’s completely normal that there are many survivors camping up in the mountains in the middle of a snow blizzard, it’s the perfect season for doing that ¬¬. We’re living in times were everyone is kind to each other… I just don’t get it. This behaviour change is too radical and old habits die hard, especially ones acquired and used for decades!! That’s a big flaw from Naughty Dog regarding Joel. They portrayed him as someone stupid (sorry Joel but it’s true), sloppy, too soft, etc. He’s older and fatherlier with Ellie all fine and good, but he’d still be very cautious toward outsiders, particularly when they outnumber him!! It’s true that at some point we’ll have to be more trustworthy toward others in order to try and reestablish society or something close to it but you’d still be wary and wouldn’t take them right to your home first thing!! I had also into consideration that they were being chased by a horde of runners and clickers and their options where limited but still!

In some games the death of an important and primary character is sometimes essential. TLOU II is one of them because this was necessary for Ellie to grown and learn more about herself, the world she lives in, among others but Joel deserved way better than what he got! I feel for Tommy too, he didn’t deserve to split up with Maria or lose an eye but I believe the reason as to why he became obsessed with avenging Joel was because he already thinks he failed him in the past already, either when Sarah died, or when he joined the Fireflies and Joel wasn’t happy about it, or when they blindly trusted Abby and her friends.

Before I start with Abby, we need to establish something else first: revenge is about retaliation; justice is about restoring balance. The motive of revenge has mostly to do with expressing rage, hatred, or spite. It’s a protest or payback, and its foremost intent is to harm. And because it’s so impassioned, it’s typically disproportionate to the original injury—meaning that it usually can’t be viewed as just. The punishment may fit the crime, but it’s often an exaggerated response to another’s perceived offense. Nevertheless, I do believe that justice comes from vengeance but that type of justice only breeds more vengeance, and this is what Abby essentially does, avenge her father (even though I believe he lost his way and became unscrupulous) and ends up being capable to live with herself with little to no trouble after what she did to Joel, after repeatedly hitting him over and over and over again with a golf club, and forcing Ellie to watch the last bit. Abby and a bunch of others, who were also aware of her secretive plans, travel thousands of miles just to find Joel and brutalise him and massacre him. That scene was really brutal. But at some point both Abby and Ellie have to realise that vengeance is not the answer and if everyone keeps coming back seeking vengeance, then they’ll move around in a vicious circle until someone decides to forgive because killing like this not only hurts themselves, but also those they love and love them.

I don’t see the WLF as a whole as someone who deserves sympathy. They’re quite similar to the Fireflies who maybe at some point had noble goals (or almost) but ended up strayed from their path. They loot and kill everyone they see, no questions asked (much like the police these days in our world), even if they’re just passing by and aren’t affiliated to any group and just want to survive.

The ending of TLOU II couldn’t have been better. Ellie was happy with Dina and the baby but deep down she knew she didn’t close the chapter with Joel’s murder. Abby, and knew that at some point, she’d have to revisit that part to close it entirely. Her leaving with Tommy was the right decision, even if Dina wouldn’t/couldn’t fully understand why and I feel sad for Maria too but I strongly believe that she’ll return - whether or not Dina will wait for her is another story.

This is all I’ve to add. I’ve been sitting her for about 5+ hours writing this because I wanted to put my perspective of this masterpiece out there and show people that the game is still great.

Let me know your thoughts!!

[jaypelt]

Cheers for Five Years of Undertale, and its Everlasting Effect on Me

Been a while since I’ve done one of these... I might even be rusty at it! Honestly, what I’ve got right now are more vague thoughts than coherent words in my head. I wasn’t sure if I’d even do this, since I felt it wasn’t entirely necessary. Everybody had so much to say! But spurned on by the display of someone very close to me, the cogs in my head couldn’t help but start turning for me too. So here I am. This isn’t going to be easy, though. Because if you read this, I need you to understand the depth of my feelings. Even if just a little. So I’ll do my best to bare my heart yet again, for the sake of it and everything its done for me. Everything it’ll keep doing for me.

The beginning is usually always one of the hardest parts. A blank space devoid of anything, that you’ve got to somehow miraculously fill with thoughts somebody else could understand. But Undertale is rarely a subject I ever have to struggle so much with. It’s been a long, long five years.

This is re-treading old ground that a number of those who know me are already familiar with, however, I don’t think this would be complete without it. But it will get very, VERY personal. If you’re not comfortable with that, then uh... giving you another warning now. But pushing forward...

Right before UT came out, I hadn’t begun to really unravel quite yet. But I was very close. It was somewhat of a rough transitional period as I moved on from my middle school to high, losing very dear IRL friends and generally continuing to struggle with school, as I had been for years. Untreated ADHD is real nasty. But I’d always had at least some friends, either online, or ones I made throughout the year, to rely on. And I didn’t really think about things. The start of this school year was no different. Even having a... perhaps questionable choice of boyfriend, but, well, he was my first.

I struggled with just about every aspect of school from basically the start, but having a small group, and especially an online partner to come home to everyday, helped me at least get through. In the coming months, however, I’d start to encounter more turbulence. Through aforementioned partner, I met someone who’d come to rely on me far more than he should have. Made even worse by the fact that he was a full grown adult while I was only 14, which will be a recurring trend. And has been for most of my life.

We hit it off pretty quickly, becoming good friends and talking to each other outside of mutual friend spaces. And through that, he started to open up about his problems. Living with a family that treated him poorly, suicidal urges, and particularly, an abusive boyfriend. If you know me well, I’ve probably definitely talked about this at least a little.

My daily routine starting becoming supporting this person through all of his troubles. Sitting in skype calls or exchanging messages for hours at a time on the daily. Rarely did a day go by where I didn’t, slowly sinking into an apathetic pit from overextending myself for the sake of his mental health. I couldn’t even help him improve, all I could do was just try to keep him alive. Which, well, I did. For months.

Everything else fell to the wayside as I was constantly stressed about the life of someone I cared about. Obviously my school life suffered even further. I grew withdrawn from everyone, and kept only to the few online friends I had. However, in the midst of this downward spiral, just before the ball really got rolling, a certain game came out. Exactly a month after it had come out, October 15th, 2015, I’d become interested after all the talk on tumblr about Undertale.

After watching a playthrough on youtube(I didn’t play for myself at first, a pity), It’d personally resonated so strongly and gotten me so hooked that it was something I invested a fair amount of my time into consuming content about. I grew super attached to all these characters that’d made me laugh, smile, cry... just this whole spectrum of emotions. And someone in particular, Alphys, really caught my attention after things had begun to get worse.

She felt so... relatable, though I couldn’t possibly tell you all the reasons. When I think about it, we’re not really the most similar, but something about her just hooked me. Maybe because she had all these things going on that nobody knew about. And that she lied. And felt so anxious interacting with anyone after she’d previously been much warmer and closer. That she was closer to “disappearing” than she seemed.

Whatever the reasons, the months moving further along, consuming content about UT practically became my lifeline. I reblogged heaps and heaps of posts  about it, watched videos, listened to the soundtrack, even started drawing because I’d been so inspired. When I was just stuck in this horrible pit of second-hand depression, it was the one thing that still made me happy. I started to really think about why it mattered to me and how. It’s funny, I’d read books obsessively for years before then, but UT was the thing that really got me thinking. It was all downhill from there, I tell you. Now I’m an artist and a writer. Horrific.

But, unfortunately, for all its good... it couldn’t stop what was to come. I was still getting worse and worse, with no end in sight. I’d already been supporting... let’s call him Phil, for a few months. And in December of that year, my boyfriend completely dropped off the grid for a while. I’d see him appear online sometimes and I’d message him, but no response, then right back to offline. Finally, he came back, approaching me with something he obviously was uncomfortable about.

To make a long story short, he’d come to the conclusion that he was straight, and decided to end the relationship. What’s bad is that... honestly? I was already doing so poorly that I had a hard time caring. But we did pretty much stop talking, and I leaned into Undertale all the more. Anyway, time continued to pass. Not without its few ups, and mostly downs. I got used to being called “mature”, usually followed by “especially for your age.” “Phil” told me that if I were legal, he’d date me. I’ve got a crippling fear of screwing up with people that’s stuck with me to this day, after a few occasions involving him. I considered doing some... not so great things to myself. Thankfully, I was always so averse to physical pain that it didn’t become anything extreme.

As for the few ups, there was “Phil” finally managing to leave his abusive relationship, when he’d tried previously and fallen into such a bad depressive episode I had to talk him down. So that was something. He’d even started going to therapy after the second break up.

Not that it did a whole lot. The school year began approaching its end and nothing had really changed. I’d been going through all the same motions for around half a year or more. My sleep was terrible, I was passing almost none of my classes, had practically no friends to speak of, and just felt... tired. All the time. But during this... the minute beginning of a monumental shift started. Another character in UT had begun to clutch me in his grasp. Even more strongly than Alphys. Flowey. Through the posts a singular person on tumblr had made about him and my experience with the geno run, I came to understand the dumb little flower more. Which is also funny, because he was previously my least favorite. Even, yes, after the Asriel reveal.

I’m having a difficult time weaving together this convoluted timeline of events, but it was around... perhaps March or early April that the person whom I’d been supporting for almost a full fucking year completely disappeared. Without a word. The one thing I’d tried to stick to for so long was just. Gone. So I drifted about with, well, no purpose.

By the end of the school year, it probably goes without saying that I was... not doing great. But one those aforementioned acquaintances I’d only just started to become actual friends with came forth to me with a question. That being if there was some way for us to keep contact during the summer. So I gave her my email, which would turn out to be a decision that saved my life. Because things would only get worse before they got better.

This is getting to be way, way, way too long. So to summarize, summertime came around and I’d been in pretty close contact with... I’ll just call her V. She was... well, unlike anyone I’d ever known. Someone who stood out with the intelligence you could just see in their eyes. Outgoing, charismatic, compassionate... all those sorts of things. We were opposites in a lot of ways. Or, at least, it felt like it.

Some things happened, like “Phil” coming back after months of nothing. Me immediately slotting back into my role of being a pillar of support, but then screwing up and hating myself for it. But honestly, that ain’t shit to the rest of the whole shitshow.

For a bit of context, my parents are divorced. So for most of the previous years, I’d been going to my mom’s place during the summer and staying with her the whole time, to make up for how rarely we’d see each other otherwise. That year... she was beginning to run low on money. She lived next to my granny, but still basically alone, compared to how she’d been staying with someone else in hotels for the few prior years.

After learning she didn’t have enough to pay rent and might be kicked out, she tried to appeal to her mom, who said she wouldn’t let her stay. Why? I don’t know. After that, she spiraled into a panic. And, well, the ever faithful little worker bee, I stepped forward to try and console her in any way I could. She seemed to recompose, at least a little. It wasn’t great, and she thought she’d have to do some unsavory things in order to survive, but... I thought that, just maybe, I’d done something.

But... later that night, she started drinking. Which... well, put her in a mood. Exacerbated by the day’s earlier events and the fact that she was taking medication that responded poorly to alcohol. She came over to where I was sitting, my little makeshift desk I’d put together to set up my desktop, with my little sister just in the other room. Just... a warning for this next part, it’s... grim. More grim than anything else in this thread.

She proceeded to tell me she was going to go upstairs and grab the gun my granny kept in her room. And berated me for thinking I’d done anything to help, saying she “wasn’t like my little friends” that I could simply talk to. With that, she walked away, heading upstairs. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so crushed in my entire life, to this day. I broke down crying, sitting in that chair.

Yet, somehow, I managed to stop when I saw her coming back down. She walked back over, pointed the gun at her head, and told me to give her a reason she shouldn’t do it. And also to this day, I.... still don’t know if I said what was right. It was all I could think of. I quietly told her that if she did it, I’d pick that gun up and do it to myself. Same as her. And I asked if she wanted to be responsible for that.

It was true, too. By that point, I didn’t care anymore.

And if there’s one thing I can say about her, it’s that she’s always cared about me. In a horrible, twisted way especially, that night. It was enough to make her silently pull the gun down, go back upstairs, and put it away. One last time... she came down, walked past me to the front door and simply said “I love you.” before going out to sit on the porch.

I’m not sure I’ll ever truly get over the events of that night. I spoke to V afterwards, as I’d been keeping in regular contact, as I said. And even been speaking to her throughout the day about what was happening. I think she was panicking just as much as I had been, and told me to go find the gun and unload it. So I did. Bawling my eyes out the whole damn time. Afterwards, I took the bullets and threw them in the large neighborhood garbage can.

The rest of the night’s a blur. I don’t recall if anything else happened, I just remember waking up tired the next day. My uncle was in the house, as he’d been staying with my granny for a while, but hadn’t been around the night before. I tried to talk to him, but.. couldn’t bring myself to open up. Even though we were pretty close. I went back to my dad’s.

That wasn’t the end of it, either. For the next coming months, I’d get drunken calls and live in fear of being put right back in the same situation. It got so bad that I stopped answering my phone altogether. I broke contact with my mom entirely. I still hate answering or making calls.

Anyway, a few other things happened in the summer, like my applying for online courses. And the subsequent ridicule from my dad’s side of the family for the decision. Tell you what, the stress of taking a test to try and join that online program, then going to golden corral and having to struggle to not cry in front of everyone there was... not the ideal way to spend a birthday. Happy 15 years to me.

So.... that was that. I still went through with online courses and everything kind of... slowed to a crawl. I tried to do school work, but depression and still yet untreated ADHD prevented me from making any substantial progress beyond a few finished classes. For a while I simply... existed in a limbo. All I did was get up, get on my computer, maybe talk to a few people, and play Overwatch. Maybe look at tumblr, as I remained into Undertale. V and I lost contact after school started back up. I never blamed her for it. In fact, I preferred it that way. She didn’t deserve to have such a burden placed on her, and I still... feel guilty for leaning on her so much.

But I’m very thankful. I hope she’s out there living a good life, wherever she is.

And this! Is where we finally get to the not depressing parts! And only... what, 29 paragraphs in? Sheesh... I know I wanted to really illustrate just how shit things were to demonstrate just how much UT did for me, but this is taking it a bit far, isn’t it? Ah well... already made it this far. In for a penny, in for a pound. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! I’m sorry. Truly. And I love you so very dearly.

Time went by and I kept doing my thing. Playing Overwatch(a practically self-destructive behavior deserving a therapy, frankly), talking to the few friends I had that I kept at an arm’s length, that sort of stuff. “Phil” and I no longer talked, thank goodness. Obviously I was depressed as all hell, not bothering to shower, eat, clean up, or do laundry for days on end. I spent more time asleep than I did awake, on most days. Did I say this was where the not depressing part was? I may have lied a little.

Blah blah “more months go by”, you know the drill. Until... I believe, November of 2016. After cementing my love of Flowey ever deeper, I’d started to follow more blogs putting out content for him on tumblr. In particular, the most important ones being I’lltrytobegood, Flowey-Answers, and later happyflowey and Corruptedflora.

It all started with a stream. I joined an art stream of LLA(Lovelyladyartist) on picarto as he worked on ITTBG. I kept quiet for the first few streams I joined, being too anxious to really out myself in any capacity. But little by little, I was coerced out of my shell. Particularly by one SilverKhaos, who I think at the time went by SilverSlayer or something. Anyway, he got me talking. And through that, I started making friends, bit by bit.

Also through the stream, I was introduced to CC(CuteCatDoodles) of Flowey-Answers. I obsessively read through the entire blog in a single sitting, just... having such a good time with it. And... strangely enough, it... got me feeling oddly better. Like I’d finally started to breath after not being able to for what felt like such a long time. If just a little. The next day, I got out of bed early, cleaned up, took out some garbage, and made breakfast. Just a simple plate of scrambled eggs. A simple, easy morning for most any average person. But for me? It was one of the most special mornings I’ve ever had.

Likewise, I did the same with Ding’s happyflowey, of reading through all of it in a single night. My head hurt like a motherfucker, but I tell you, it was worth it. The effect perhaps not as profound, but still very meaningful to me, as well as sowing the seeds of yet more relationships to form. If far off in the future, as far as this timeline is concerned. I still adore all of those dumb, charming little flowers so much. Mania would come to inspire my first ever OC, in fact. Thinking about that blog makes me miss when the UT fandom was more active here, even though I never participated in the fandom at large. But I’m grateful for the memories and incredible amounts of enjoyment getting to read it all brought me. I have way too many cropped images of Hysteria.

I wasn’t immediately better, but it was all the start of something new. I kept up with the streams, also joining in for CC’s. For hours upon hours a day, I’d just hop into them and spend the day talking away. I had something to really look forward upon waking up, starting to adjust my schedule so that I at least didn’t miss TOO much. I was able to really make friends, it felt like. Even though I wasn’t and still am not the most socially adept.

And as luck would have it, because picarto chat was and probably still is pretty unstable to this day, it just happened to go down and that led to... the creation of the discord server! It started off small, but steadily got more and more joiners from the growing population of the streams. LovelyLadyArtist, CuteCatDoodles, BrySkye, Flowers-Without-Pots, SilverSlayer, KRS, Donut, Mr.Quarter, Dragoler, Stilla, Chara, RotmModdy, Rowdy, Dunal, and probably at least a few others I’m forgetting... all names I encountered there and most of which I still see daily.

Through that server, we started keeping up even when there wasn’t any stream going on. Just goofing off and having a good ‘ol time. Already I was... well, doing a helluva lot better than I had before. All because of the gathering of a small community surrounding this indie gem. And even further centered in a niche specifically about Flowey! Who, and I’d forgotten to mention this before, I’d found a surprising amount to relate in. He’d become a big, BIG hyperfocus. Which is why I’d met everyone at all. Truly, it’s crazy to think how possible it is for me to have never come down this path.

From there on, I continued to meet new people, established new relationships. I even got invited to an RP server, creatively named “Flower RP” :p. At first I was hesitant, perhaps not even initially 100% interested. But as people really got into it, I felt an incredibly strong Fear of Missing Out. Leading to the creation of a character still near and dear to my heart.... Zorch. The result of contributions from many friends, from design ideas, to character concepts, and even his name(thanks for that, Rowdy). And... I began to write. It wasn’t great at first. very short form, and I didn’t know how to approach the roleplaying mindset, or even how to properly characterize him.

But over time... I got better. I became more confident. I really got into the nitty-gritty of character writing and discussion. I joined in on hours long discussions about the characters, lore, and narrative of Undertale. I’d wake up just to be there as soon as chat began to move, all the way to the point where everyone was finally asleep. I started to be able to help people again. For months, participating in this RP, in this chat, in this community was what I lived for. The joy that I felt in being among friends all working towards and talking about a common goal and interest is, well, honestly still somewhat unrivaled.

Paci, Pots, Neue, Castor, Silver, Nightmare, Rowdy. Me. All of us joined together in mutual love for a game, spurred on to feverishly create our own content about it. I kept up for months on end, living by the mostly same routine for probably the longest I’ve ever stuck to anything. Eventually... things happened and the server’s gone quiet. We had problems with management, people feeling excluded, targeted, etc etc. It was a very... consequence heavy RP, most of us were almost complete newbies to the roleplaying game, and many came to care rather deeply about the ongoings of it. Perhaps too much. But, well... I’m not sure it could have been prevented.

Sometimes, I still wish I could go back to that point of my life. I know someone else who does too. Even more than me. But I know not to try and emulate the past, as alluring as it may seem. So I push forward. Leading to yet another server with its own events. Clement, myself, Rowdy, Zielo, Neue, Moddy, Vee, Mini, Nappy, Tia, Silver. Some familiar names, some new. All still with the foundation of Undertale, but it quickly became a thing for us to just... chill and talk about anything. There was real love in that place. It was at this time that I even started going to therapy! After some struggling with the family. It helped a lot.

In time, that server, too, went under. For reasons that have long since been buried and forgiven. It no longer exists, after being deleted entirely, but I’ll always remember it. And we did eventually all(mostly) gather back together someplace new, which is still being talked in. Even gaining some new additions recently! If any of you guys are catching this one, I love you!

And we come to the final and most recent group. One I wasn’t actually a founding member of, instead being a late joiner. Comparatively smaller than all the ones before, but filled with just as much love. Pip, Ding, Kink, and Cola. Remember when I mentioned happyflowey sowing seeds, and then didn’t even expound in further detail about corruptedflora? Well congratulations, you’ve reached the payoff.

It all started after I began interacting with the mun of CF, Kinko, and became mutuals with them. We usually just spam reblogged from each other on occasion for a while. That is, until I got messaged, then sent a friend request through Discord. Which, even still, didn’t immediately go anywhere. But eventually... some things led to another, and we joined up in a particular server. Not one I’ll be naming, but times were... turbulent in there. It went under and we lost contact a bit after that.

That is, until completely out of the blue, I just get invited to a server with them and some pals to just join in on Roblox shenanigans. Imagine me, sweating and anxious as hell after getting asked to join a server with two people behind blogs I adore, considering Ding was there too. Cardiac arrest, I tell you. And obviously more than just them too! But the night turned out to be so fun that I forgot I’d ever been so anxious in the first place.

From there on... the rest was history. There’s been many, MANY ups and downs, but I’ve found yet more people I love very, very dearly. And they’ve gotten me to open up about the way I feel the most. In the past years, I could never tell someone I loved them, no matter how much I really wanted to. The words just couldn’t come out, but they... they brought that out in me. And now I can say it whenever I want! Like now! I love you guys!!! So much!!!! And not just you all, but everyone else too!!! And much love to Kink especially for being a driving force behind me making this, as well as just being a goddamn star.

So... as a final ovation... LLA, CC, Bry, Drago/Paci, Pots, Silver, Donut, Quarter, Stilla, Chara, Moddy, Rowdy, Neue, Castor/Skater, Tia/Nightmare, Clement, Zielo, Vee, Nappy, Ding, Pip, Cola, and Kink. As well as some stragglers like Log, Ingrid, and Jai. I’m probably still forgetting some... but thank you all for being my friends. It’s been a long, long five years. And yet, many of you are still in my life. In at least some form. There aren’t words enough to express my gratitude towards every single one of you for the most incredible years of my life and pulling me from what can be called nothing less than the fucking abyss. You all made and continue to make life worth living.

And thank you, Undertale. The game behind all of these relationships.  The game that inspired such strong feelings in me when nothing else could. That made me into an artist and writer. The reason I’m still alive. The game that changed my fucking life and will continue to affect me, I believe, for the duration of it. I really cannot overstate just how important you were and still are. There’ll never be anything else like you.

[cosmiciaria]

Radiata Stories review! (spoiler free - long post!)

I am SPEECHLESS. I can't believe I spent so many years without knowing about this game. My friend thoroughly recommended it to me but with my ps4 and many other pc games, I just wasn't in the mood for a ps2 oldie. But here I am, and I want to spread the word: play Radiata Stories.

In the world of Radiata, the land is divided into regions that belong to different races: elves, dwarves, orcs, humans (and ronsos – no, sorry, wrong game – but you can't fool me there's a lion guy who looks like Kimahri from FFX). These species have been at odds since time immemorial, and thus the dragons – Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Silver and Gold – have guarded their beings from above.

We follow Jack Russell, a 16-year-old who dreams of becoming a knight. We accompany him to the entrance exams, only to see him fail miserably against a girl, Ridley Silverlake. Despite his clumsiness and obvious embarrassment for having been defeated, he's allowed to join the Radiata Knights, alongside Ridley, only because he's the son of an important late knight. They form a new brigade called Rose Cochon, under Captain Ganz Rothschild's leadership.

This trio will be sent into action in no time. Their dynamics are fun and there's a bit of rivalry between the two new knights, but they get things done. Ganz is proud to finally be able to be captain of his own brigade, and regards his two pupils with care and wisdom. This seems to be the flow the story is going to follow.

An important quest arrives: Rose Cochon brigade must reach the Elf Region and ask the Light Elves leader for a favor. However, things get tough in their journey there: a blood orc attacks the Dark Elves village, and the brigade plunges in to fight and defend.

In the battle, Ridley gets mortally wounded. Jack gets all frantic and desperate, and the brigade asks for the Elves' help. Lord Nogueira, the Dark Elf leader, decides to do the unthinkable for non-humans: the only way to save Ridley is to perform the transpiritation ritual, a spell only available for elves that allows them to take the soul of a dying fellow and use it to heal another one who might still live.

The ritual is successful, and Ridley's soul is fused with that of a small elf who'd died in the battle. Everything seems to settle down for a bit, with Jack and Ganz returning to Radiata City filled with good hopes for Ridley.

The next day, you're fired from the Knights.

This is where the game opens up for you!

From now on, it's just you, Jack, in the middle of a big city, paving his way to the top of the Vancoor Theater guild, the guild of warriors. Since the only thing you can do is fight, better to put it to good use and earn some money in the process!

The game offers a variety of things to do. You can start recruiting people as party members. You know, like, in Dragon Age, you can recruit characters into your team? Or, in any other rpg, that you have a team of five or six characters, maybe some more? Yes? Ok, here in RS you can recruit (listen to me) over 170 characters. Yep, you read right. Mind you, you can't recruit them (catch 'em all) in your first playthrough, but just so you know, yes, this game is that big.

Some people will ask you for a favor before they're added to the 'friend list', but others will join your right off the bat. Once you have a respectable team of four party members that you choose, you can begin doing solo missions, which are the guild's assignments to you and will redound in money and goodies. You get to know the other guild's members, you get to fight alongside them, you get to know and care for the civilians in the city. With a night-day system, if this game is anything, is alive.

NPC's have their own schedule: following the clock in the top left corner, they do and say different stuff depending of the moment of the day you approach them. They're walking around the city, performing random things, making them seem alive. Some events are only available at night, some others only during day. Some people will be nice, others not so much. Some parts of the city will shine, others will look depressing and dirty. Birds chirp, trees are swept by the wind's fine breeze, mosquitoes swarm around – this game breathes life into its pixels in every corner.

Now that we're on the aesthetic aspect, I must admit, this game looks gorgeous. With a very prominent anime artstyle, still it aged pretty well for today's standards: sometimes the lighting was too real, the sunlight pouring from the mountain's side, the character's long shadow stretching onto the road. The animations are good as well, as are the physics: I am beyond amazed by how well clothes and hairs move as flawlessly as if they were real. Each of the recruitable characters have a different victory pose and they have different lines for everything. Some particle effects are really nice, since I didn't think there existed the technology for it back then. The main city is huge, and when I say huge, I mean, every door you see, you can enter, and inside you'll find at least a two-floor building with objects to interact with and people to talk to. And don't even get me started on how BIG the Vareth Institute is in itself – and all that stuff is optional! The world is also vast and filled with brimming elements, although don't be fooled by the illusion of 3D: this game is, mostly, a 2D experience when you want to go from point A to point B.

You'll spend a good chunk of your game doing tasks for the guild. In the meantime, Ganz is somewhere playing the bandit and Ridley is hearing voices in her head. In this 'middle' part of the game, the story seemed to drag on forever for a bit: I wanted to go on with the main plot, and, while you can actually do that (just hit the sleep option over and over until a cutscene appears), the game tends to make you go through long and tedious solo missions to get that Grind™ you need. Dungeons are not long or too big in reality, but the number of encounters (which are forced on you since you can't avoid enemies by circling around most of the times for the 2D aspect) turns what should've been a walk in the park into a dragging hell. This portion of the game, I'm not going to lie, seemed a bit too long for me. And since the gameplay mostly consists in pressing the circle button and hearing Jack yell "Ha! Haiiyaah! Ha! Haiiyaah!" for ten hours straight, yeah, it can get boring.

But I guess the game was trying to make you feel at ease, comfortable around these walls. You're training your fave party members, you go with them everywhere to play the warrior and earn some money, you get occasional messages from Ridley telling you everything's fine – until the plot makes a halt and suddenly you must choose.

I'll keep this spoiler free, but this game is almost fifteen years old, so these are no news: there will come a point where the plot branches into two possible paths, the Human side, and the Non-Human side. I can't tell you which one is right, for there seems to be pros and cons in both, so I'll let your heart decide. For what we care now, I chose the Non-Human side, completely convinced with my decision, only to see myself doubt in many instances.

At this point, your plot shakes. Your comfort zone breaks. Suddenly, things are changing: your team is not there anymore, Ridley acts weird, where the hell is Ganz, what's going on with the dragons? Who am I supposed to trust in this world full of people who just want to exterminate each other?

I won't spoil it. I'll just say, that whatever you choose, please stand firm by your decision. You'll need that conviction, because the game is going to make your ground tremble a few times. And with those endings that await you – man, I don't know if I want to finish either path.

So, to avoid spoilers, I'll talk about the characters a bit!

Jack is your main protagonist, as you could've guessed. He's your average shonen main guy, at least in the beginning hours. He's clumsy, he wants to be a hero, and he even mocks shonen protagonists by saying that he'll awaken to a dormant power and save the world with his friends. But life hits him hard, accuses him of things he hasn't done, and so Jack evolves across the story. His character development is subtle, but it's there: he starts off as a brat who wants to fight, ends on a mature note, with some quite insightful thoughts and reactions I haven't expected from him. Normally, the shonen guy remains a shonen guy; this doesn't happen here. Jack ends up being an adorkable character, worthy of respect, sympathy, and a force to be reckoned with.

Ridley remains a calm force during the game. She's collected, she's well-educated, and she knows her way around. At the beginning, she can't stand Jack much, but as days go by, she starts to consider him as an equal and true friend. In the Non-Human path, her romantic feelings towards him are crystal clear: there's a small spark between them, that flickers every now and then when the plot allows them a moment's respite. Only them and a handful of other characters know the truth behind the transpiritation event, and as such there's a profoundly deep connection that keeps them together, although they're separated most of the story.

Ganz is ma fave boi and he must be protected at all costs. A young and promising man, Ganz was created to be likeable. You can't help but sympathize with his funny appearance: chubby, huge armor, huge sword, and funny moustache. But he's also a man of wisdom, with a golden heart. He's righteous and wants to do good. And he deserves all the love in the world.

Other notable characters are Genius, a scientist who's obsessed with the transpiritation thing that went down, and may know more about the plot than it seems at first glance; Natalie, a guarding woman who works as Ridley's not-so-secret bodyguard; Larks¸ the leader of the Knights and whose motivations remain a mystery to me even to this day – I can't read into this character at all!; Lord Zane, the leader of the Light Elves, who laughs maniacally when no one is watching and I can't bring myself to like him; Gawain, Ganz's father, who disappeared 16 years ago since his best friend died; and Cross, Ridley's fiancé, who just wants to be the best hunter and paves his way to the top of the knight ranks by any means necessary. I hate this guy so much, his only trait is 'I am a bad person' and that's it, he's so cartoonishly evil it makes me want to punch the screen. Probably you see more of him in the Human path, but unless he has a very tragic backstory to redeem him, he's not likeable at all. I mean, you can say that he has ambition and he gets s*it done, but still, damn him, and his voice actor, UGH.

Despite some minor thingies, the relationship between the characters is gold. Jack and Ridley are cute and make me wanna draw the meme of NOW KISS every two seconds. Jack and Ganz are companion goals. Ganz and his father – I loved that they kept their interactions personal and off screen. Idk why, but this story is about Jack, and yes, I care for Ganz as well, but his trouble with his father was his own, not Jack's, so I guess this is a director's decision which I'm 100% behind.

The plot can get predictable at times, but there's also a healthy amount of plot twists that made my jaw drop in a few occasions. I mean, I guessed who the bad guy was since the beginning, but let's face it, it's pretty obvious and the game doesn't hide it. There are other things that made the plot unfold worth my time, like trying to recruit that awesome character, or like what is the deal with Jack's late father, or what the hell is going on with Ganz, and what will happen to the city now that I'm on the Non-Human side? And the game answers them all (I read that the manga answers even more questions, so treat yourself).

All in all, RS is a vast jrpg experience, with high replay value and tons of things to explore. The world seems small, but it isn't. There's always a reward for those who wander off. For a ps2 title, this game is giant. And in the good sense. I thought I had seen the pinnacle of the ps2 era with Final Fantasy XII, but I'm highly considering changing my view on that one.

The endings are bittersweet in both paths. There's not a complete happy ending, I warn you. Things get darker towards the end, and the story knows how to subvert expectations in the good way. Remember Jack saying he wanted to be the hero like in a shonen anime? Well, not happening in this game guys. At the end of the day, this isn't a shonen story: this is a Radiata Story (roll credits), and like in every country's history, sometimes blood must be shed for events to take place and situations to unfold.

I am beyond pleased with this game. I'm considering playing through the Human side now – but first I need to recover myself from this Non-Human ending. I'm not ready to face more tragedy yet.

Go play it. Just do it. You won't regret it.

And pray that Tri-Ace develops ONE DAY a decent sequel.

[halberdierminister]

Okay, so today is of course the last day of February, so let's sit down with my goals for the year again and take stock of how this month went.

1. Write 250 Words Each Day

I definitely had more days that I skipped this month than last month, but I have always made up for it. I cannot bank for future lapses, but I can make up for past ones. Setting the bar at 250 makes it easier to do that without getting overwhelmed. Still, I felt like I had a lot of burned out days this month, and that made it harder to write. But I still wrote. So I'm on track with this but it still isn't a daily habit. It's close, but maybe not as close as it was last month. I need to get better at this.

2. Read at Least 55 Books This Year

I read 13 books this month, which puts me at 23 books for the year. That means I am just over halfway to this goal! I look forward to seeing how much better than my goal I can do. Still, even reaching the goal will be a great success. I am on track for this.

3. Get a Full Time Job

This month, I applied for 29 jobs. And wouldn't you know it, I actually got one! So this is technically a success! I got hired for a full time job at Half Price Books, which will start in the middle of next month. It has full benefits after 30 days (including various insurances, 401k, profit sharing) and some good perks. The downsides though… it's still retail. It's still on my feet. I didn't really want that. And the real kicker is that it's only going to pay 11 dollars an hour. Why is that an issue? Well…

4. Move Out of My Parents' House

The rent in Madison is pretty high. I don't think I could even move into a co-op on 11 an hour, especially with the costs of those benefits deducted from my paycheck. If I had a roommate or two I could maybe afford an apartment, but I don't really want to move in with someone I don't know, and I don't know anyone who's looking for a roommate right yet. I guess I'll take this opportunity to save up and make more preparations. Still, I think I may keep looking while I work here, because I don't want to be here for another year. I do not feel much more on track for this than I was last month.

5. Drink Less Soda

Yeah, I drank less soda. But I've been drinking more canned iced tea? I'm not sure if that's an improvement. Still, I don't drink soda every day anymore, and when I drink soda I typically limit myself to one. So that's a massive improvement over the last several years. I am on track for this one.

6. Get Something Published

While it hasn't happened YET, I have made great strides! Let's see:

-submitted my finished piece to a fanzine I'm going to be in that comes out next month

-applied to be in another fanzine

-submitted to an online journal and got a quick rejection BUT they said they really liked the piece, but the ending needed strengthening, so that's what I will do

-submitted work to two journals

-submitted work to two prize contests

-submitted work to The Fuckit Zine, which I read issue #1 of and fell in love with

We will see over the course of the next (checks watch) SEVERAL MONTHS to see how this continues. And as I write or discover new unpublished works, I'm gonna fire them off to more places. I WANNA BE DROWNING IN CREDITS THIS YEAR. I am on track for this one.

7. Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman

Last month (January) I added 6,654 words to The End of A Legitimate Businessman. This month, I wrote less than half that. I added only 3260 words. Still, I am approaching the end and I think I have a more solid picture of what is going to happen than I did a month ago, so I would still say I am on track for this one.

8. Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin

I uh…. I think I finished this one. Like I wrote a couple entries one day. And then on February 27 I wrote like three more and I think I finished it. Whoops. You can find it here, but I warn you, if you have no interest in apocalyptic poetry about Persona 3 and deeper Persona lore, this one might not be for you. But if you wanna read it anyway that'd actually be rad. So this one is an exceptional success? I think this is an exceptional success.

MINOR GOALS

9) Finish Playthroughs Of:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: I finished this in January

Persona 3 Portable (100%): Didn't touch it

Persona 1 (Main Quest Good Ending): Didn't touch it

Pokemon Sword (Post-Game Plot): Didn't touch it

Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: I completed this one! On February 26, I beat the elite four, beat the champion, and caught mewtwo! My pokedex is only missing Mew. I consider this a completed playthrough, since I beat the plot and caught all of the pokemon available in the game without purchasing a 50 dollar accessory. I could try fighting the Pokemon Masters, but like… that's so super optional I do not care to do it any time soon.

Persona Q 2: OKAY THIS IS A NEW ONE. I think I lost my 3DS. So I bought a cheap 2DS and a copy of Persona Q 2 because right now it's the only Persona game available in America that I haven't beaten at least once and I've GOT TO. I made it to the point where I left off before. So. I'm on track for this one.

10) Record More Ukulele Videos

I don't know if I played my ukulele at all this month. Whoops.

11) Record Let's Play Videos

Obviously I did not do this either.

12) Duolingo?

I have had to use two streak freezes, but otherwise I have a 61 day streak going in Spanish so that ain't too shabby.

13. Work Out?

I messed up my back/shoulder/arm/chest early this month so any progress I had made in the way of working out ground to a sharp halt. I think I could pick it up again soon. I should. Mreh.

This is over 1100 words, by the way.

[clevercatchphrase]

Just some numbers and figures~

So! I finished my fan fiction, You Monster, this week, and it took me exactly 3 and a half years to write/edit/publish. This post at the time of writing, however, is being written a few days before the final chapter goes up, just examining  some numbers and trends around the wordcount and posting rate of my fan fic, because i’m obsessed with numbers and such, and i’m just trying to chew up time and keep myself occupied before the last chapter goes public. There’s literally no point to this post other than to marvel at how long this story is and how long it took me to get it out there, and reflect on what happened to me in The Real World during that time. Care to join me?

In Microsoft Word, this entire story is 609 pages and 209,235 words. The word count is slightly higher on AO3 (which I consider the definitive draft), partly because AO3 counts formatting tags as words for some reason, and because if I make little adjustments to the story, I’ll do it on AO3, but not on the original word file (or corresponding tumblr post for that matter) because I can’t be bothered to. 

According to AO3, I started this fic on January 3rd, 2016, smack dab in the middle of my winter break in my last year of college. I probably started writing it a few days before, maybe in december. I’m not really sure, but I’m kinda surprised I started it so early in the year, especially since I was writing by the seat of my pants for the first 14 chapters or so.

The following pictures highlight what days/months chapters were posted, according to AO3 (I personally think there might be a discrepancy or two due to timezones)

Chapter-wise, the first third of this story (Chapters 1 through 12) was written and posted in 2 months, and TWO THIRDS of the entire story (Chapters 1 through 25 (rounding up)) were written in the first YEAR.

Wordcount-wise, HALF the story (roughly 100k words) was written in one year.

There was a dramatic drop in productivity at the middle/end of 2016 due to Real World Stress, mostly me graduating & getting a job, the presidential elections, and learning a family member was starting to have kidney failure.

God, 2017 was a bad year for me, productivity-wise. In early June I lost said family member due to their kidney failure, and was completely unmotivated to work on You Monster for the rest of the year. I remember forcing myself to write for NaNoWriMo that year, and it helped snap me out of my funk, but I didn’t like how the writing came out and kept pushing off revising and editing the drafts for several weeks. I also remember getting really sick on christmas eve/day with a terrible flu, which made me unable to post the next chapter until January.

I actually felt a lot better mentally and emotionally in 2018. I WOULD have written more in early 2018, but that was also when the Hiveswap Comic Contest started, and lasted for 3 straight months with me doing nothing more than drawing comics for 12 consecutive weeks. Then, after that was over, I started thinking/planning more seriously about writing ANOTHER story, which later became Ghost Switch, and I offically started that halfway through 2018. I originally thought about making Ghost Switch a written work, but it was basically going to be another re-telling of Undertale, which was what I was doing with You Monster anyway, and I didn’t want to write all of that out again, so I decided to make it a comic instead. It was a great decision for me art-wise, because now I’m improving my art skills through weekly comic pages, but it was also a terrible decision art-wise because now I GOTTA KEEP DRAWING POSES AND BACKGROUNDS AND DRAWING PEOPLE IS HARD. 

Back to the point- I forced myself to write this fic again for NaNoWriMo that year, and was terribly upset that I still didn’t finish. But this time, I forced myself to revise and edit my writing until it became something I could tolerate, and posted the next chapter in January (again, but this time because my writing needed far more revisions than last year’s nano draft) 

Getting back into revising and editing DID seriously help me get back in the groove of Wanting To Write, but it was a little trickier now that I was also drawing a comic, and it was hard to manage my time between the two, because when I write, I do it for great stretches at a time. I mean, like, 4 or 5 hours straight of writing. Same goes for comic making, too. sketching the pages can take me two hours, and cleaning/inking/coloring them can take me anywhere from 4 to 6 hours.

Hm. If I included the other fics I wrote during this time, I get the feeling these calendars would look a lot more active and colorful. Maybe i’ll do that for myself later, so I can see how much I posted in 3 years.

This year, I was absolutely determined to finish this story, even if it killed me. I was still struggling to manage my time between writing and art, mostly dedicating a few weeks to make a buffer of comic pages so I could have a couple of weeks dedicated to writing. It was time consuming, and I felt bad when I worked on one but not the other, but I finally got my breakthrough in May, when I had to take multiple trips to an automotive shop for several different car repairs. Instead of just leaving my car there and going home, I brought my writing spirals with me and just wrote and wrote and didn’t stop writing while I waited in their loby. I finally finished the rough drafts of my story after being stuck for 4 hours in a Pepboys, and spent two more full days typing it out. Then, I rested for a week, and spent 3 more revising and editing the remaining bits. I was hoping to get the whole thing done and posted before July ended, but that did not end up being the case. For me, when we finally get to August, we have entered “the end of the year”. Ah, well. Even though I didn’t get the story completely posted before August, I can still take pride in knowing I finished it before the year was half way over~!

NOW FOR SOME NUMBERS!

I personally divide this story into 5 arcs, Ruins, Snowdin, Waterfall, Hotland, and New Home And Beyond (Which is basically anything that can happen after you unlock the true lab in-game)

Ruins

The Ruins arc I consider everything in chapters 1 thorugh 12. It is simultainiously the longest arc (chapter-wise, with 12 chapters which as mentioned earlier, is 1/3rd of the story) and also the shortest arc, only taking up 24k words (Which is an 8th of the entire story, or roughly 12.5%).It was also the quickest writen arc, as it was primarily prologue/first act material. Pretty much all of it was written in that first January. It’s 80 pages long, or 13% of all pages

Snowdin

The snowdin arc (chapters 13 to 22) is just under 25% of the entire story, coming in at 49 thousand words (on the nose!) It is the second longest arc in both word count and in number of Chapters (10, to be exact~) It took me roughly 4.5 months to write this arc. We also spend the most physical in-story time in Snowdin. Almost 3 full days, which is half of the story’s timeline (not counting the 7-8 years in the Ruins. That was all set-up) It’s 172 pages long, or 28% of all pages.

Waterfall

The Waterfall arc (Chapters 23 to 28) is the longest arc wordcount-wise, making up another 25% of the story, coming in at 53.6 thousand words, and dead center when it comes to the number of chapters it makes up (which is 6). Looking at this now, litterally half this story takes place in Snowdin and Waterfall. Roughly one full day is spent in waterfall, from noon of the first day, to roughly late morning of the second. This arc took me 11 months to write/post, and if you read the notes for these corrisponding chapters, you can tell I was not having a good time during it. It’s 178 pages long, or 29% of all pages.

Hotland

The Hotland arc, (chapters 29 to 32) Is the shortest arc chapter-wise, with only 4 (10% of all chapters), and second shortest arc wordcount-wise, coming in at 36 thousand words, or about 18% of the story. It’s also the shortest in-story arc time-wise, seeing as you only spend about half a day here. I did not like writing the hotland arc! Mostly in part because Hotland is my least favorite region in the game. Chapter 32 is probably my least favorite out of all of what I’ve written. It was difficult figuring out what to do with Alphys and Mettaton, seeing as their interactions with you in game heavily focus on you and your human-ness. I am quite glad that each chapter was pretty neatly divided by in-game floors. It was a good way to know where a chapter could end and when I could give the characters some breathing room. It took me over a year to complete the Hotland arc, and most of that time was because I didn’t want to revise and edit what I wrote. It’s 123 pages long, or 20% of all pages.

New Home and Beyond

I don’t consider the True Lab part of Hotland because of in-game story reasons. You can’t access it until you’ve gone to New Home at least once, and once you enter it, you cant leave until you finish it, which, again, takes you to new home. Honestly, once you get to the true lab, you’ve won the game. There is no way to ruin your pacifist playthrough once you get to the lab, and while the amalgamates may kill you, you can’t “lose” once you get this far. That’s why I consider Chapter 33 the start of the New Home arc even though in my story we haven’t seen new home yet (mostly because there are no saves or resets in this story, so we kinda couldn’t have gone there first).

The New Home arc is the second shortest chapter-wise, making up the last 5 chapters (13% of all of them), and is dead-center when it comes to word count, finishing with 46.5 thousand words, or roughly the last 25%. I was actually really excited to write everything from chapter 34 to 36 after having been fantisizing about it in my head for the last two years. I gotta be honest, the end of chapter 37 gave me some trouble. I was still making edits up to a few days before it went public, but I think I got the feelings I wanted across~ It’s 161 pages long, or 26% of all pages.

Extra???

I started keeping a word file for bits of dialogue and scenes that I originally wrote in my spiral, but ultimately cut for one reason or another. Mostly these are just sentences and snippets that sounded redundant, ooc, or were just an alternate dialouge I decided not to use. I didn’t start doing this until chapter 28, according to my files, but according to the masterfile, there were 6.4 thousand words I ended up not using. 

There are, in fact, several bullet points I had originally planned and ended up not using, such as Sans ASKING Undyne to keep an eye on the kid while they were in waterfall, which sounded hypocritical after I wrote him coming to peace with them, as well as having Asgore tuoring the Underground that week, and thus Sans, Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys having to hide Frisk from him once they become friends. (the painkillers Alphys also gave frisk were actually supposed to induce drowsiness in Frisk, making them fall asleep so Alphys could keep them from going to New Home, but this was a point I dropped at the absolute last minute, and you can tell if you re-read chapter 29, because it’s hinted at, but the painkillers are never mentioned again. I figured that plot point was a little too dark for Alphys’ character)

Fun Fact: the zalgo text in Chapter 27 DOES actually have dialouge in it, if you know what to look for. Only one person has asked about it, but no one has yet to decifer it.

AT A GLANCE:

ARC LENGTHS (CHAPTER WISE) SHORTEST TO LONGEST

Hotland (4 Chapters)

New Home and Beyond (5 Chapters)

Waterfall (6 Chapters)

Snowdin (10 Chapters)

Ruins (12 Chapters)

ARC LENGTHS (WORDCOUNT WISE) SHORTEST TO LONGEST

Ruins (24k)

Hotland (36k)

New Home and Beyond (46.5k)

Snowdin (48k)

Waterfall (53.6k)

ARC LENGTHS (PAGE COUNT) SHORTEST TO LONGEST

(Same order as above)

TIME TAKEN TO WRITE/PUBLISH, SHORTEST TO LONGEST

Ruins (1 month)

Snowdin (4.5 months)

New Home and Beyond (~6 months)

Waterfall (11 months)

Hotland (>1 Year)

Other Numbers For Some Reason

Chapters 1 through 19 make up the 1st 50k words (this when Frisk falls into the underground, up to Sans attacking them in the kitchen) 19 chapters

Chapters 20 through 26 make up the 2nd 50k words (when Frisk decides to seek asgore’s help, to when Undyne cuts the bridge) 7 chapters

Chapters 27 through 31 make up the 3rd 50k words (when Frisk dislocates their shoulder to Flowey killing the messenger spider) 5 chapters

Chapters 32 through 37 make up the 4th 50k words (When Mettaton decides to change the programming, to Frisk’s final choice) 6 chapters

Only 5 chapters exceed 10k words, they are chapters 22, 27, 28, 33 and 36

Here’s a visual representation of all the chapters and their word counts in relation to one another. I was so startled by the spikes of chapter 22 and 28 that I had to go back and skim the chapters to remind myself what went down in them and why they were so long. Chapter 22 is papyrus trying to keep the human in snowdin while sans runs some errands, and then the human discovering the skelebro’s deceit. Chapter 28 is the human realizing Undyne tried to murder them, and then escaping from waterfall. I distinctly remembering saying I could have split chapter 28, but I was so tired of writing waterfall that I refused to do so because I just wanted it to end already.

I find it absolutely hilarious how consistant my word count was until chapter 20 (chapter 15 is an outliar), and then everything went off the rails.

Here’s a graph of the total word count, shown to you NaNoWriMo style~ (I spent way too long in excel making both of these charts, please validate me) 

The climb definitely looks a lot less drastic here, as it is always building on itself, but if you look closely, you can see one or two inflection points, roughly around chapter 20 and 28.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m so glad to finally be done with this story. It’s certainly deviated from what I originally planned, but I think all the changes are for the better. Now I can think about writing other things, like the PTA!AU shorts I’ve been meaning to do. It was fun and it was challenging, and this is literally the longest thing I’ve ever written in my life. Will I ever make a story this long again? Maybe?? If I ever encounter another game with as much character and worldbuilding as Undertale that also just hits me in the feels the same way, I might, but for now I’m going to focus on other projects (most of them still undertale related, but shut up)

Got any questions, comments, concerns for my fic? I’m so glad it’s done, now, and I’d be happy to talk about my thoughts behind it~

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 3.8

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in chapter 3, Maki started to realise how her talent could be used for good as she helped Shuichi through the investigation, Kiyo was the worst and murdered Tenko as well, causing something of a setback in the fact that she’d just begun to get through to Himiko, the writers might still be trying to get us to think Kaito is expendable, Kaito’s illness took over as the most pressing issue on his mind, and he completely accidentally brought up the mastermind’s intent to nerf him with his phobia.

This time, the trial begins.

Kaito:  “Sorry everyone, but I don’t think I’m gonna be much help this time. Because of Monokuma’s… disruptions, I couldn’t do a thorough investigation.”

Kaito is still clinging to his unintentionally-completely-correct excuse to save face. It’s interesting to note how he apparently wants everybody to think that the way in which he’s useful and therefore needed to be nerfed is because he’s a good investigator, when he’s decidedly not. His real value – and presumably the reason the in-universe writers wanted to nerf him in this chapter – comes from being able to be there for and encourage Shuichi, and everyone else too. He should know this himself, but he doesn’t seem to want to frame things that way.

(And he’s still apologising even as he is arguing that it is supposedly not his fault.)

Kokichi:  “I can tell Monokuma is overcompensating to hide his self-consciousness.”

And obviously here Kokichi’s actually talking about Kaito. Which, to be fair, is correct, because Kaito doesn’t really believe his excuse is true.

Monokuma:  “Next time, spend less time fixing your hair and more time investigating, spaceman!”

It’s interesting that Monokuma comments on this too. I have to wonder whether or not he knew about the decision to nerf Kaito in this chapter – it’s not like he necessarily needs to know everything about what the writers have planned to manipulate the way the story goes, only the stuff directly related to the motives.

Kiyo:  “Do not let your emotions hasten your judgement. There may be two killers.”

Tsumugi:  “So… our other culprit… might nooot be one of us heeere…”

Tsumugi, you know full well that does not logically follow from what Kiyo just said. The possibility that the culprit is a spirit has nothing to do with the possibility that there are two killers. If you’re accepting that a ghost murderer is an option, then both victims could have been killed by a spirit, and it could have been the same one or two different ones. And if you’re trying to present a legitimate theory, you could try saying it like a normal person instead of putting on that spooky voice.

What I’m saying is, leave Kaito the fuck alone already, you know he’s not going to make a huge amount of difference in this trial either way. At this point you’re not even manipulating the story; you’re just being an unnecessary dick.

Maki:  “Say something, Shuichi. It’ll be a mess if this keeps going on.”

Maki is still frustrated at Kaito’s inability to be his usual self while this ghost stuff is going on and wants it to stop being a thing already. I don’t know why she can’t say something herself, though; she also read the Necronomicon.

Shuichi:  (Well, in the interest of being thorough, I should clear things up here.)

More like in the interest of keeping Kaito functional.

Gonta:  “So ritual did work!?”

“C-Come on…”

“I said stop…”

“Resurrected!?”

“Y-You gotta be kidding me!”

…

Miu:  “Angie did say she was gonna bring Rantaro back!”

“Guys?”

“Come on, be serious…”

“This can’t be happening!”

“So stop it, stop it!”

This is the kind of thing that white noise is really fun for.

Kaito:  “PLEASE! STOP IT!!!!”

“Shuichi, say something.”

…I still think loud outbursts like this aren’t quite in character for Kaito, though. At least we get some fun white noise from Maki here too.

Monokuma goes on to insist that the Necronomicon would have worked if it’d been used. So even though it was the cubs who made that claim to begin with, it is also backed up by Monokuma himself, and, well… he never usually lies about motives. Which is what led me to think up my Flashback-Light-and-clone theory I proposed earlier. That said, it is pretty awkward writing that they leave open this insistence that resurrection would have been possible but then never properly explain how at any point. They don’t even hint at it in a way that lets you figure it out on a replay if you’re paying attention (like how they hint at the reason for Kaito’s totally extraneous phobia). I only thought of my theory because I wanted to come up with something that worked, and this was all I could think of, not because I’m certain that it’s what the writers intended to be the truth.

Tsumugi:  “Oooh? So resurrecting the dead was actually possible this whole time?”

Leave him alone, for goodness’ sake! Just drop this lazily-written phobia plotline already and let Kaito move on to freaking out about the other thing you gave him to deal with, which is an infinitely better story than this. Not that I think that’s why you gave him that to deal with, but still.

Okay, wow, complete tangent here: I took a break here while writing the commentary and came back to it after booting the game up at this point in the trial, and… the screen was completely black, except for the textboxes and other UI stuff. The game still played, but I couldn’t see any of the text in the Nonstop Debate, so actually proceeding would have been nigh-impossible. I had to restart the class trial from the main menu to fix it and then fast-forward back to here. Is this a known glitch? Maybe it’s because I saved while a line was still in the middle of being read? Because that was a thing.

Kiyo:  “I did not care about some katana…”

He totally did, though; he was threatening to tear out Kokichi’s nerves if he touched it earlier in the chapter. It amuses me that the game acts as though you can try and prove that, too.

Kiyo:  “I had no desire to kill her in the first place.”

Yeah, of course not, it’s not like you’re a serial killer who targets girls or anything.

Kokichi:  “Well, it can’t be Himiko. She was besties with Angie. I trust their friendship! You guys do too, riiiight?”

Sure you do, Kokichi. Yet again, this is him trying to make a point of how foolishly naïve everyone else sounds for talking about friendship and trust in a killing game.

Keebo:  “…Can we trust their friendship so readily?”

Kokichi:  “Obviously! Let’s believe in them!”

Kokichi’s got this really mocking tone to his voice as he says this. He is really transparently just trying to make his own words about belief sound empty and hollow, to make people think that everyone else’s words about belief are just as hollow too.

Kiyo:  “And do you have an alibi for last night?”

Gonta:  “Gonta in room, talking to bug friends. Much better than being out too late at night. Ask bug friends if Kiyo doubt Gonta!”

Aww, Gonta. He doesn’t realise that other people don’t speak bug and so can’t question his bug friends, so obviously this makes a perfectly good alibi, right?

Kokichi:  “Yeah, I did it. I killed Angie.”

Shuichi:  (…Hm.)

I love how Shuichi’s immediate reaction to this is one of utmost scepticism.

Kiyo:  “What are you saying? Is this some kind of joke?”

Kiyo looks more flustered than you’d expect him to be about this if he weren’t the murderer. He is so confused as to why the fuck Kokichi would confess to something he knows he didn’t do.

Shuichi:  “The gold leaf on that katana did peel rather easily.”

Monokuma:  “Hmmm… That evidence rings a bell. Specifically, a school bell…”

Yeah, because everyone in the audience is a big Danganronpa genwunner and you put that here to pander to them, apparently.

(Like, seriously. Fifty-two past seasons. People should not be so fixated on season 1 any more.)

Ugh, these Psyche Taxi segments. Practically every time, the first two or three questions are things that have already been clearly established and only the last question has you actually figure out something new, this time that the whole katana-effigy-rope setup was used to lock the door by being spun around. Why the heck not just take that last question and make it a regular multiple choice question.

Kokichi claimed earlier during his confession that he locked the room by picking the lock closed, so this gets him to admit he didn’t actually do it after all.

Maki:  “Why did you say you were the culprit?”

Kokichi:  “…I wanted to lure the culprit out. If I claimed to be the culprit, then the *real* culprit would agree as well, ya get me?”

Yeah, except that the real culprit did not jump on the opportunity to save himself by condemning Kokichi (and why would he even try to, since Kokichi was already busy condemning himself with his confession). What Kokichi’s confession actually achieved in terms of smoking out the culprit was having Kiyo be subtly the most bewildered out of anyone by it. But Kokichi didn’t pick up on that subtlety, apparently (or if he did he’s still keeping it to himself, thanks a lot Kokichi), so fat lot of good his whole ploy was.

Kokichi:  “And if they pressured me to confess, then that would have looked mighty suspicious. Sheesh! Darn it! It didn’t go my way because Shuichi butted in on my plan.”

You were already confessing. Obviously the culprit wouldn’t have needed to pressure you to confess any more. Your plan was already failing before Shuichi came along and put the lid on it. You are not as clever as you think.

Kaito:  “That leaves us with four suspects… Tsumugi, Gonta, Keebo… and Kokichi.”

Kokichi:  “Don’t forget Himiko. She’s also a part of the student council. Doesn’t matter if she was besties with Angie, she’s still a suspect.”

And here’s Kokichi proving just how transparently manipulative and two-faced he was being a few minutes ago. (Look at Kaito low-key running with the “it wasn’t Himiko because they were friends” argument, though. Of course he would.)

Himiko:  “Me? A suspect? I’d… never kill Angie!”

Himiko is having emotions!

Kokichi asks all of the “Suspect Rangers” what they think they could say to clear their names. Everyone is understandably unsure (what can they say; obviously no-one has alibis), then…

Himiko:  “Why… did Tenko have to die?”

Kaito:  “Huh?”

Aww, Himiko. And I like Kaito being the one to react to that, because of course he cares about her suffering and wants to help if he can.

Himiko:  “Can we talk about Tenko’s case now and not just Angie’s—”

Kokichi:  “Mwah-hahahaha! I got ya exactly where I wanted, Himiko!”

…And Kokichi was apparently trying to bait someone into changing the topic to Tenko’s murder, under the assumption that whoever does so is Angie’s killer trying to misdirect everyone.

But no, Kokichi, Himiko doing this doesn’t prove she killed Angie. It just proves that she’s a person who’s having emotions about the fact that the two people who cared about her most are now dead.

Kokichi:  “Until we solve Angie’s case, Tenko’s case is meaningless! Did you suggest that to waste our ti—”

Himiko:  “It’s not meaningless!”

Shuichi:  (Himiko?)

Himiko:  “Tenko’s death was meaningless? How dare you! Poor Tenko… How could you do this to her!?”

Look at Himiko go! Look at her getting genuinely fired up and emotional because Kokichi is being a dick about the fact that her would-have-been friend is dead!

Kokichi:  “Himiko, stop it with your crappy lies.”

Himiko:  “Lies…?”

Kokichi:  “Everything you said is total BS. You didn’t give two shits about Tenko when she was alive… But now you’re like, ‘Oh no! Poor Tenko!’ after she’s dead. C’mon, really?”

And again we have an example of Kokichi projecting his own manipulative assholery onto someone else because he can’t comprehend the notion that other people don’t think like he does. If he were in Himiko’s shoes and had not cared about Tenko while she was alive but was claiming to care now, obviously that’d be him lying to try and get sympathy and misdirect everyone, so that’s definitely what Himiko’s doing too, right? It couldn’t possibly be that she’s realised she was unfairly cold towards Tenko and regrets it now that it’s too late or anything.

Like, seriously, Kokichi, you were there in the seance room when Tenko gave her final speech to Himiko. Have some fucking empathy, dude, instead of trying to make everything about you.

(There could be an argument made here that Kokichi is being a dick about this on purpose to push Himiko into admitting to her feelings and showing them. But this started as Kokichi making an attempt to bait out the killer and wasn’t specifically about Himiko until she spoke up, and she was already having emotions at that point. For Kokichi to then continue to be even more of a dick, even after she’d started getting really riled up and passionate, would not be at all necessary if he were secretly trying to help her. So that’s not what he’s doing. He’s just projecting and genuinely believes she doesn’t care.)

Himiko:  “I know I ignored Tenko before… That’s why… I’m so upset now… I should’ve faced Tenko… worked things out with her while she was still alive. But now… it’s too late. I can’t complain to her… or thank her…”

Poor Himiko is finally accepting that Tenko was always trying to help her and that all she was doing was running away from the advice Tenko was giving. It’s just a shame it took Tenko’s death for it to fully sink in.

Himiko:  “It’s… too la—”

Kaito:  “Yeah, seriously! It’s way too late to realize that now.”

And here comes Kaito, doing what he can to help! This is essentially an application of his philosophy that simply moping around lamenting bad things isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Kaito:  “Our only option is to face her death head-on!”

Himiko:  “…Nyeh? Face her death?”

Kaito:  “Himiko… I understand what you’re going through.”

It’s a little oddly specific of Kaito to say that he understands what Himiko’s going through when he hasn’t personally lost anyone he was especially close to so far in this killing game. Yet, I really, really don’t think that Kaito would lie or exaggerate about something this serious and personal. He wouldn’t try and artificially make things about himself when this is 100% about Himiko right now. So… more fuel for the “Kaito’s parents died” train? I really think it is. Him having dealt with his parents’ death by trying his best to face it head-on definitely sounds like the kind of thing Kaito would have done that would have helped shape him into the person he is today.

(Also, assuming that Kaito did lose his parents, it’s still notable that he’s not explicitly mentioning this as his reason for why he cares so much about helping Himiko, because this still isn’t about him and as much as possible he wants to avoid making it so.)

Kaito:  “So I’m gonna help you out! Let’s work together to find the truth! I’m not gonna let anyone say her death didn’t matter!”

Himiko:  “K-Kaito…!”

Aww, Himiko being appreciative of Kaito’s support. After losing the two people she was closest to, she must be feeling completely alone and like nobody’s on her side, but here’s Kaito showing that he is on her side. That has to really help.

Kaito:  “Abandoning someone who died and only thinking about your own survival… That’s just as bad as a hit-and-run! I won’t forgive something so messed up!”

…Did Kaito’s parents die in a hit-and-run.

It is just like Kaito to be furious at any hypothetical person who commits a hit-and-run regardless of who the victims were, just for running away from what they did rather than owning up to it and facing the pain they inadvertently caused. But even so, this is a strangely specific thing for him to bring up in this particular situation, unless he has some personal investment in hit-and-runs that has made him think about this before and is at the front of his mind because he was already thinking about his parents.

I am like 90% certain this is something the writers deliberately intended to imply here, and again I love that there are subtle details about Kaito like this that don’t need to be outright stated because that doesn’t stop them being true.

Kokichi:  “I already told you, that’s sooo unnecessary. We’re getting sidetracked here.”

Kaito:  “No, even if it was a different culprit, we need to know how Tenko died. If we don’t find out who killed her, we won’t be able to work together. Not now, not ever.”

He’s so right! If they come out of this trial only knowing who killed Angie and not who killed Tenko, then there will always be the looming possibility that one of the remaining survivors killed Tenko and is still hiding that fact. It would be impossible to truly trust each other with that hanging over everyone. And of course Kaito would have already considered the risk of that happening, because he’s always thinking about everyone’s co-operation. Kaito is so good.

(And look, Kokichi is still arguing that Tenko’s death is meaningless even when this is no longer so much about Himiko’s feelings, so that was never why he was saying that.)

Kokichi:  “Finally, you noticed! Geez, you’re so slow.”

Yeah, sure, Kokichi, you just try and save face and pretend that you were aware of that all along and that Kaito’s the one who’s slow on the uptake, not you. I totally believe that you were already aware of this notion which centres around the concepts of co-operation and trust; it’s not like you have trouble even comprehending those ideas or anything. God, Kokichi is so incapable of ever admitting when he’s wrong.

Shuichi:  (I don’t mind going over Tenko’s case… But that was an abrupt change of topic. Was that… intentional…?)

Shuichi, don’t tell me you’re actually being fooled by Kokichi’s attempt to imply that Himiko only changed the topic to draw attention away from the fact that she supposedly killed Angie.

Miu:  “So those four are the culprits!”

Gonta:  “Oh… Himiko still culprit?”

Why are we still using the words “culprit” and “suspect” interchangeably. Gonta I can understand, but come on, Miu.

Kiyo:  “True, I may have suggested it. But I explained the procedure beforehand, yes? If we all knew of it before the murder then we are all equally suspicious.”

Not really, though. That makes it possible that the others could have done it, but Kiyo is still clearly more suspicious than anyone else because he’s the one who wouldn’t shut up about this seance for the past several days and definitely knew every single detail of it.

Kiyo argues that Keebo did it by using his flashlight to sneak in under the floor. He’s later going to try and claim Himiko did it because she picked the room. He has absolutely no game plan for this, does he. Most killers usually at least try to pin it on one specific person and make all the facts seem to point to them.

Miu is also totally on board with claiming Keebo did it. So much for her caring about him, then.

Keebo:  “My status as a robot does not mean I am capable of performing superhuman feats!”

I mean… you are, Keebo. Nobody else here can shine light from their eyes or replay recordings of conversations they were witness to without additional equipment.

Kaito:  “Enough with the flashlight! It’s way too bright!”

Kaito being specifically the one to complain here makes me wonder if his illness is making him more sensitive to bright lights than usual.

Tsumugi:  “Maybe they marked Tenko with glowing paint and looked for that? That’d let the culprit find her. Then they could stab her through the floorboards…”

Monokuma:  “Boy, that sounds really familiar too! But I’m just gonna ignore it!”

…Yeah. On a first time through, this would just seem like a fun little continuity nod that Tsumugi just unintentionally happened to make. But really, it’s a pretty clever subtle hint towards the mastermind’s identity. Less subtle of a hint for people who know what’s truly going on here, though – by which I mean the in-universe audience. You’d think this would have basically told them who it is.

Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… What if Angie’s spirit killed Tenko?”

I’m going to assume that Kokichi doesn’t really think spirits are a thing and is just suggesting this because it gives him an opportunity to be a huge dick to Kaito again.

Kokichi:  “See? You can’t explain, can you? Only a spirit could have done th—”

Kaito:  “W-Wait, I know! What if the culprit was hiding inside the cage!? If they were in there, they coulda stabbed Tenko during the seance!”

I am amused by Kaito proposing something way stupider than he usually would in his desperation to move the topic away from spirits.

Maki:  “I agree with Kaito. The culprit could have been inside the cage.”

And then Maki going along with that seemingly ridiculous theory for a much more sensible reason.

Maki:  “Maybe the culprit wouldn’t need to hide in the first place.”

Kiyo:  “What?”

Maki:  “Also, the culprit could’ve killed her in the cage at any time. I think you know what I’m getting at, right?”

This, however, is a frustrating example of someone acting uncharacteristically vague just so that the player controlling Shuichi can have a game to play and figure it out themselves. Maki would not usually beat around the bush like this.

Kiyo:  “After stabbing herself with the sickle, she threw it underneath the floor.”

Still pretty difficult to buy that the sickle ended up in the corner of the room from that, though.

Himiko:  “W-Well it doesn’t make sense to me! There’s no reason for Tenko to commit suicide!”

Damn right it doesn’t make any sense! Look at Himiko understanding and believing in Tenko at last.

Of course Kokichi is the one to make the argument that Tenko killed Angie and then killed herself out of guilt and hid her suicide in an attempt to take Himiko with her, because that kind of selfish, underhanded assholery makes perfect sense in his mind as something that someone who liked Himiko would do.

Kokichi:  “Himiko, you said that Tenko would never do anything like that… But how can you be so sure? Did you guys *actually* know each other? People keep all sorts of secrets, like Maki. She hid the fact that she’s a cold-blooded killer. Is it wise of us to trust people wholeheartedly in this kind of situation?”

Kokichi is so utterly, unshakably convinced that trusting anyone ever, and especially in a killing game, is completely illogical no matter how they might have acted towards you.

Kaito:  “Geez… you’re such a naive dude.”

Kokichi:  “…Naive?”

Kaito:  “We’re all just people, y’know? Of course we’re gonna have some secrets. What matters is whether there’s any malice behind ‘em.”

Kaito continues to have the best philosophy, yet again. He knows that people are complicated and therefore that doing a bad thing doesn’t necessarily make someone a bad person. The simple act of hiding something from others is not inherently malicious. Maki was hiding something bad about herself, but it wasn’t for a malicious reason! It was to protect herself, not to hurt everyone.

And this is delightfully relevant to the main theme of this game, that lies can sometimes be used for good. While Kokichi is usually the person one would think of as advocating that idea the most, maybe Kaito actually believes that more than Kokichi does.

Kokichi:  “People can lie about how malicious their hidden secrets really are.”

…Because Kokichi is irrationally convinced that if someone is hiding something, it’s always for malicious reasons. That’s why he was so terrified of Maki. That’s why he continued to try and push the idea that Maki was a terrible person even once she’d explained her non-malicious reasons for hiding her talent and everyone else had more or less accepted it.

Kaito was not wrong to call Kokichi naïve. Think about how Gonta is naïve: he always assumes the best of everyone when there’s no evidence either way, and even sometimes when there is circumstantial evidence indicating that they’re not such a good person. Kokichi is exactly like that, but in the opposite direction: when things are ambiguous, he always assumes the worst of everyone, even to the point of selectively ignoring circumstantial evidence that indicates they might not be so bad after all. It’s an unusual use of the word “naïve”, but not an inaccurate one. While Gonta is childishly convinced that everyone is always good and wants to help each other, Kokichi is childishly convinced that everyone is always bad and out to get each other.

Kaito:  “Well duh. It’s impossible to know for sure what others are thinking. That’s why it all comes down to whether or not you believe in yourself!”

Kaito isn’t doing a great job of explaining exactly what he means here – one would have expected his sentence to end with “believe in them” – but there is a logic to this that makes sense to him. It still is about whether you believe in that person, but Kaito extends this to then also be about whether you believe that your own judgement of that person is correct, despite not being able to know for sure what’s going on in their head. And of course Kaito can believe in himself in this way – as I have pointed out time and again, he has an incredibly keen intuition when it comes to other people and has literally never been wrong so far and never will in future. Kaito has full confidence in how good his intuition is (his “official Luminary of the Stars hunches”!), which is why he’s able to believe in other people as strongly as he does.

(Okay, technically Kaito’s intuition has been wrong so far about one person: Ryoma. Which is to say that Kaito’s intuition is only ever wrong when his issues about heroism get in the way and cloud his judgement. He’s going to be wrong in future for that reason, too – but only for that reason. When that’s not a factor, which is most of the time, his intuition is and will always be correct.)

Kaito:  “If you get betrayed, it’s not their fault! It’s your fault for believing in them! That’s why I believed in Maki Roll! Because I wanted to believe in her!”

Kaito is not like Gonta in this regard. He does not just blindly believe that everyone is good without proof. His proof is his judgement – which isn’t completely concrete evidence, but it’s more than enough for him to be willing to take that risk. And again, he knows he’s taking a risk by doing this. He’s fully accepting of the possibility that he might be wrong. But if he turns out to be, then that’s the fault of his judgement being wrong, not of the person in question for being who they always were in the first place. It’s a really great philosophy that would help anyone avoid becoming paranoid, because it puts any problems down to misunderstandings between people, rather than the other person having been deliberately out to get you.

Maki:  “Just because you’re acting all cool doesn’t mean you get to skip training.”

Pfft. But also, this is Maki not quite getting Kaito once again. He’s not saying this to try and make himself look good! He’s doing it because this is what he believes, and it’s relevant to the discussion, so why wouldn’t he say it? He’s just being Kaito.

Kaito:  “H-Hey, c’mon… Don’tcha think you’re being a little too strict?”

…Although it seems like Kaito might want an excuse to skip training, you know, because of the whole dying thing. Still, I don’t for a second believe that’s the reason he gave this speech.

Kokichi:  “Well, we come from different backgrounds. So for now, let’s agree to disagree.”

You want to tell us what it is about your “background” that gives you such ridiculously massive trust issues, Kokichi? No? No, of course not.

Like, I understand why Kokichi would never want to talk about the reason why he’s like this. Even so, it frustrates me to no end that the writing never even tries to hint at what it is. I would like him so much more as a character if I could get a proper, cohesive picture of why he is this way and not just that he is this way! I’d be able to really empathise with him and feel his fear of betrayal instead of just intellectually knowing that he must have it. But that picture just isn’t there. (And it’s not like it couldn’t be there even without Kokichi directly talking about it. Look at how many things about Kaito I’ve been able to point out and be almost completely certain are true even though they’re only subtly hinted at.)

Kokichi:  “No one’s ever called me naive before. And from Kaito? Seriously?”

Haha, Kokichi is so mad at the notion that Kaito’s the rational one while he’s not. Of course he’d want to insist that it’s Kaito who’s naïve for buying into all this nonsense about belief. But no, in reality, Kaito’s philosophy about believing in people isn’t naïve at all. It’s not for everyone, sure, but it has great internal consistency and logic to it. Kokichi constantly tries to insist that his own philosophy is the sensiblest most rationalest in order to protect himself from any notion that he might be in the wrong by being an untrusting lying asshole, but really, the logic of his philosophy falls apart as soon as you get to the “everyone must be a bad person no matter what because I’m terrified of thinking otherwise and then turning out to be mistaken”.

Himiko:  “My heart… can’t reach Tenko anymore… But I wanna believe in her… She wouldn’t commit suicide! She wouldn’t try to take us down! That’s what I want to believe!”

Yay, Himiko buying into Kaito’s philosophy!

Gonta:  “Me too. Gonta no can believe Tenko commit suicide.”

And of course Gonta would believe in her too.

Kiyo:  “If you insist we believe in Tenko, then provide a reason to do so.”

Shuichi:  (A proper reason…) “Alright… I’ll give you a reason.”

There is no evidence-based reason to believe that Tenko didn’t commit suicide. Shuichi believes in her as a person, just like Himiko does and just like Kaito was encouraging them to do, but in order to get the others who don’t believe in her to buy that she didn’t kill herself, there needs to be evidence. So Shuichi is planning to lie.

Maki:  “…Is there a reason?”

Shuichi: “Yes, there is. Will you trust me, Maki? If it turns out I’m wrong, you can blame me all you like. But for now… I need you to trust in my detective work.”

He’s not really asking Maki trust his detective skills; he’s asking her to trust his judgement of Tenko’s personality and play along with his lie. It’s exactly like Kaito was saying: you have to believe that your own judgement of that person is accurate – and if you can believe in someone else’s judgement too, that works the same way. (That’s also why Shuichi started believing in Maki in the previous trial – because Kaito did, and Shuichi decided to trust his judgement.)

Tsumugi:  “But if Tenko did commit suicide… It would explain why she died during the seance.”

“Makes sense to Gonta…”

What do you mean it makes sense to you, Gonta? You were just saying how you believed that Tenko would never kill herself!

Maki:  “…You’re right. I completely forgot about that important detail. Tenko died instantly…”

Yay for Maki believing in Shuichi’s judgement and lying with him! Even though she has to make herself seem careless in order to do so.

Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… Words of a true killer. Pretty sure we can believe everything she said.”

Yeah, Kokichi’s pretty sure she just lied, isn’t he. Look at him still trying to imply that everyone should doubt her just because she’s an assassin, without actually calling out her lie and dragging the trial back to a halt.

Kaito:  “How could you forget that, Maki Roll? You better apologize to Shuichi!”

Maki:  “…Excuse me?”

Shuichi:  “I-It’s okay, Kaito, really. No apology necessary…”

And I love how Kaito is completely oblivious to the fact that they both just lied.

(Again, reminder: Kaito advocates apologising when you’ve genuinely made a mistake.)

Himiko:  “Just like I thought… Tenko wouldn’t commit suicide…”

Gonta:  “…Thank goodness, Himiko.”

Aww, Himiko looks to relieved to hear proof that she’s right to believe in Tenko, having no idea that the “proof” is a lie. And Gonta is so happy, all for her sake. What a good.

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