#what do you MEAN he’s fated to die in every playthrough

[synthwayve]

Sometimes I think about how nobody says Micolash’s name out loud in game

[shadowshrike]

The Curious Case of Halsin and Astarion's Ascension

For anyone who's occasionally poked around my stuff, you probably know that I found my Evil run of Baldur's Gate 3 (by which I mean my selfish run where I tried to gain as much power, wealth, and companion trust as I could) to be my most satisfying thus far. Part of that was the unique experience of having Halsin ask to join Tav and Astarion's relationship post-Ascension.

At the time, I said yes because it made sense for my character to "collect" an Archdruid. Out of character, I was tickled by the idea that Halsin confessed after Astarion became the new biggest bad in the land. Halsin was supposed to be a Good guy. Surely, either a possessive Astarion would be spitting mad about the arrangement, or Halsin would have second thoughts about Mr. Vampire Ascendent once he got a taste. I was ready for the drama.

It never came. In fact, the glimpses of their dynamic were so comfortable and playful that I was shocked.

Since then I've been doing a lot of thinking about Halsin and why he might act how he does throughout the Ascension storyline. I realize most of this can be handwaved with 'fanservicey romance writing.' That's true for parts of all romance paths, honestly, and I don't consider it a wholly bad thing given the game's goal to make you its center. However, I think being dismissive of the writing is not as much fun as building headcanons that work with any set of behaviors or lines you get.

So enjoy some theories pulled from datamined dialogue and my personal games. As always, this is completely hypothetical - I encourage everyone to write 'canon' in their personal playthroughs however they prefer.

Note: it's impossible to get all these lines in a single run due to some hinging on Astarion leaving and some may be bugged or near impossible to trigger. They're just being used to explore a character and dynamic that I don't see much of around fan spaces.

Halsin on the value of lives

To briefly set the stage, it's important to understand how Halsin views life and justice. He spells it out rather clearly if Kagha kills Arabella and her parents are also dead.

Halsin doesn't consider himself to be an arbiter of good and evil, only a steward of nature and its Balance. He highly values life. However, it's not him, the leader of the Grove, who is ultimately responsible for deciding Kagha's fate; it's the wronged parties or, barring that, nature itself who should decide her true punishment.

Halsin: As for the idol? It's nothing compared to a life. A mere object, next to one of nature's creations. I cannot absolve you, even if you are repentant. The girl's parents should have decided your fate, but they perished. Instead, nature will judge you. You are banished from this place - banished from everywhere the Oak Father's creations thrive.

But valuing the sanctity of life doesn't mean he doesn't also understand the importance of sacrifice. For example, if Wyll chooses his freedom over his father, Halsin counsels that it's a necessity to sacrifice to grow at times, no matter how unpleasant.

Halsin: You made a hard choice, Wyll. But not one that is unknown in nature. At times, a seedling must strangle the very tree that bore it, if it is to survive.

The price of 7000

So, Halsin's not a big fan of sacrificing life, yet understands that sometimes, people need to die for others to thrive.

But what about 7000 lives? A whole village worth?

That level of sacrifice sounds an awful lot like the day his life was destroyed by Ketheric and the Shadow Curse. A horrible event that haunted his every thought and deed for the next 100 years.

Within this context, it makes sense that all of his responses during the Ascension, whether Astarion does it or not, are focused on the price being paid. He usually emphasizes the sheer number of people affected and never discusses Astarion's potential evil (more on that later) or the undead nature of those lives.

Halsin: Stay your hand, Astarion. To sacrifice so many is a tyrant's ambition.

Halsin: All those lives snuffed out, just to grasp some power. That was craven - unnatural.

Halsin: Astarion resisted the allure of Cazador's would-be powers - and I am glad of it. Whatever he would have gained would have come at a great price.

The interesting part about this is, as an Archdruid of Silvanus, those undead lives should be considered an abomination. The Oath of Ancients oath break if you free the spawn reminds us of this. So Halsin's advice to save the spawn is not necessarily druidic advice - it is a personal opinion wrapped in flimsy druidic justifications.

He even recognizes undead as unnatural when you enter Cazador's home:

Halsin: A lair of undeath - most unnatural. We must tread carefully.

Yet about the spawn, who are undead and an intimate part of that unnaturalness, he says this about releasing them:

Halsin: Good - they deserve a chance at life. Nature will handle their fates from here.

Mercy for all monsters?

This is interesting to compare to another encounter with a smaller version of an eerily similar choice in Act III. The mindflayer in the Windmill - a person turned into a monster, much like a spawn. Allow it to live, and it may devour a family. In that case, Halsin says:

Halsin: We allowed this unnatural thing to live - now a whole family's worth of blood is on our hands.

He joins a host of other Good companions who curse themselves for showing mercy where it wasn't warranted. These are largely the same companions who would also save the spawn.

Karlach: This is our fault. These people died because of us. What were we thinking?

Wyll: Justice does not entail granting mercy to monsters. We should not have let this abomination go free.

Gale: A cruel conclusion to the mercy we showed, but hardly an unpredictable one. As long as it lives, so will its appetite.

The contradictory perspective taken during these two storylines shows the importance of emotional context in how we make decisions. For most, their traveling companion, who also has a tadpole, is the first vampire spawn they've ever met, while mindflayers have generally been the big evil this entire time. This could lead them to feel as though a horde of spawn may have enough humanity to need a chance, while a newborn Mindflayer should be exterminated on sight. Also, most of the other Good companions are relatively young and idealistic, so it makes sense that some may make foolhardy, heroic decisions.

But this encounter also begs the question: if these heroes are so distraught by having the blood of one family on their hands due to a single hungry mindflayer they saved, how could they justify letting 7000 starving monsters with unquenchable bloodlust free? Are they simply kind-hearted and short-sighted? Or maybe they're only optimistic about the hunger of vampire spawn, despite having personal examples of both a spawn and a mindflayer who manage their hunger equally ethically - by feeding on enemies and criminals.

Their naivety is driven home by Jaheira not being moved by the mindflayer or the spawn due to her extensive life experience. She believes in both cases that the greater mercy is to kill the creatures now.

(About the spawn) Jaheira: And what of the living they'll feast on, should they not prove as admirable as Astarion? They deserve a chance, too.

(About mindflayer) Jaheira: Look well. Our stupidity. Our price to pay.

Halsin is even older. He's a devout druid. He recognizes undead as unnatural. By all accounts, he should be on the same page as Jaheira to preserve the Balance. Yet in the face of that, he still advises to give the spawn a chance to live free, likely wreaking havoc wherever they need to feed.

I like to think this strange blind spot in his doctrine is due to a combination of Astarion's presence humanizing the unknown spawn, therefore making their unlives worthy of protection, and his own history as a genocide survivor creating an emotional reaction strong enough to override his usual wisdom. The price of a village is simply too devastating and personal for him to condone. No matter what letting 7000 ravenous undead free may mean.

Making the price worth it

Once you've ascended Astarion, you may be surprised that Halsin - generally a good man - is now steadfastly on Astarion's side. His reactions to the Gur conflict highlight this. If you side with Astarion against them, he's not happy, but resolute.

Halsin: An unfortunate battle... but I must stand by those I count as allies.

And if you decide Astarion is evil now and side with the Gur, Halsin doesn't seem to care about what Astarion has become, only that you allowed the sacrifice to happen and then let it go to waste:

Halsin: We allowed Astarion to sacrifice so many, only to just turn on him soon after? We should have stopped him sooner.

In contrast, many other companions call Ascended Astarion a monster, evil, or maniacal if you turn on him. They believe killing him at that point was the only right answer.

Karlach: It's done. It had to be done. Astarion was... out of control. Gods dammit. Look, he was an evil leech, but he was ours. I thought he'd changed. I was wrong. I always am these days.

Minsc: Do not mourn Astarion. The Gur are known to be a just and righteous people among the Rashemaar. They named Astarion monster, and so monster he was. Yes, Boo - even if he sometimes seemed a friend.

Gale: That's one scourge eliminated. A vampire with that much power would be a death sentence for this city. A pity Astarion didn't understand that. Or rather, didn't care.

Lae'zel: Astarion proved himself no less maniacal than his master. His death was a favour - to him, to us, and to the city.

Wyll: Hunt the monsters of the Sword Coast, protect the people - that was my promise. Killing Astarion was the right thing to do. I have to believe that. But I'm not proud of it. Not after... all this.

Ignoring Astarion's evil and telling you that you shouldn't have betrayed him may seem odd for a character who usually has a strong moral compass. Especially since Halsin doesn't tell you that you shouldn't have betrayed Shadowheart if you choose that path, though he's wary of that decision since you're handing her over to Sharrans. However, if Halsin's focus is on the 7000 lives and not on Astarion's personal kindness or cruelty, it makes more sense.

The people are gone. There is no taking back all those lost. So he's left with the need to make their sacrifice something other than a meaningless slaughter. The power for his companion must be worth it.

Halsin on Evil Astarion

You may be thinking, "Okay, but even if it's all about the mass sacrifice mimicking his own horrific past, shouldn't he still care about Astarion being Evil? He doesn't like evil acts at all!"

That's mostly true. Halsin certainly hates Shar for personal reasons and can get upset when you do cruel things. However, he's also potentially had a bit of a soft spot for Astarion since Act I, when you can decide the vampire spawn is evil and kill him or kick him out of camp.

His lines for this are actually shared with Karlach, Wyll, and Jaheira, according to the data. The uniqueness is primarily in his distraught line delivery.

If you kill Astarion, Halsin admits that he liked the guy even though he was a killer:

Halsin: Rest in peace, Astarion. You may have been a blood-thirsty murderer, but I liked you all the same.

And if you send him away, Halsin says this about Astarion being alone in the woods:

Halsin: He's someone else's problem now, anyway. Woods are full of boars. Maybe he'll learn his lesson and start hunting something that won't miss him when he goes.

His camp reactions immediately after Ascension mirror this attitude of concern rather than condemnation of evil. If Halsin speaks directly to Astarion, he sounds exasperated (the way Halsin says his name always makes me snicker) while Halsin once again brings up the idea of the price being paid.

Halsin: Astarion... you have ascended amongst the ranks of the undead. I can only hope that you do not come to regret the price that you paid.

However, the almost identical line if he's talking to another player character is delivered differently, particularly in how he says Astarion's name. It's more concerned than judgmental, implying that his frustration with Astarion is coming from a place of worry rather than pure anger.

Halsin: Astarion... he has ascended amongst the ranks of the undead. I can only hope that he does not come to regret the price that he paid.

This is particularly notable because it's in contrast to Shadowheart, who has a very similar line after her evil choice, but the emotion behind both sounds more similar to my ear.

After that initial comment, Halsin can banter with Ascended Astarion about how he's turned the player into a vampire spawn if there's a player romance. Unlike most of the other companions who can comment, such as Wyll and Gale, he expresses worry for both of them, not just the player. He also explicitly explains he has no intention of kink-shaming them, just warns about how dangerous having a master/thrall relationship can be if made real.

Halsin: To give oneself wholly, and to have a lover totally in your thrall...? A harmless game, until it becomes real. I worry for the two of you, Astarion. For your sake, I hope some of it is just a fantasy, deep in your heart.

But perhaps the most blatantly accepting we see him of Ascended Astarion is if they go to the Drow twins together. There are always some playful lines with one another if they're both present, but one is unique to Ascension if the player bites Halsin as a spawn during the scene. Halsin's response is light and delighted, acknowledging Astarion's role as not just a vampire, but the lead in your new relationship.

Halsin: Ha - tickles. See what a bad influence you are, Astarion?

Combine with Halsin's direct propositioning of Astarion if Astarion teases him about his night with the player, and there's a case for long-held attraction as well, regardless of alignment.

Astarion: I hear things got wild between you two. I hope no one was too badly mauled. Halsin: We're all in one piece. Perhaps you'll join us next time. Astarion: It's bad enough having one person with fangs trying to keep control of themselves. Two of us could be dangerous.

All these lines, taken together during times when others label Astarion a monster, suggest that Halsin accepts Astarion as a whole. He doesn't believe in trying to change people's nature, so maybe he sees any distasteful deeds as part of Astarion's, the same as an owlbear cub eating its mother might disgust some though it is completely natural.

It makes sense, then, that Halsin might be proud of Astarion for choosing morality or personal growth, but he isn't too bothered if that doesn't happen either. What line Astarion would have to cross to earn Halsin's true ire is unknown. The reverse is a much more complicated question (mostly because it's plausible that many of Astarion's lines are rooted in deception) that I may delve into another time.

Is this whole relationship a little ironic given that Halsin is The Selfless Good Druid and Astarion is The Selfish Evil Undead? Absolutely. But that's the fun of it, in my opinion. It adds depth to these characters in ways that rarely shine through during a singular playthrough, especially since very few will do the crazy thing I did with an Ascended Astarion + Halsin romance.

It sure makes for narrative fun, though.

[choices-binglebonkus]

PB should just hire you to revamp WTD.

Part of the reason stories like ILITW and ILB left me so *shook* after playing them is because of decreasing nerve scores and the main characters' lives are at stake because of that. And of course these death sequences are well written to boot. Even though I was deliberately making the bad choices in my first playthroughs just to see what would happen, even though I was well aware it was gonna be horrifying, it still left me nearly unable to sleep. I'm not even kidding. ILS knew what they were doing and it did it good.

Having LIs' fates be determinant not just on specific stat levels but also your hard choice decisions would have been some very next-level goodness. But unfortunately, PB still played it just too safe even in one of the more respectable modern Choices books. #WakeTheDeadDeservedBetter

Absolutely, anon. That’s one of the biggest issues with modern books. For books where they need to take risks and get creative, they just don’t.

The It Lives series was so impactful because there were very real stakes. You could die. Your friends could die. There were lives on the line and they made that very clear early on in ILITW, letting us know that their nerve at the end of the game would directly tie in to their fates. If, say, Lily and Dan died, it was YOUR fault. If Lucas and Andy died, it was YOUR fault. If all of your friends died, well, you know the drill.

Plainly put, important characters integral to the plot could die because of your mistakes. And PB was absolutely not afraid to make you feel that in the most visceral, gut-wrenching ways.

Branching off of that, zombie media also tends to do this sort of thing particularly well. Wake the Dead wasn’t fully inspired by it, but had some very loose inspiration from The Walking Dead. In both the comics and the show (more so the comics), The Walking Dead isn’t afraid to let you know that absolutely no one is safe. No one.

Wake the Dead has many issues, but that, I think, is the biggest. It simply had no stakes whatsoever. Unlike some of the best zombie media, the zombie bites weren’t always fatal, and that took away a HUGE amount of what made the zombies so scary.

When the raiders attacked Sunflower Creek, I knew the main group would survive and there would be minimal casualties among the side characters. When the MC was taken by the raiders, I knew they were going to survive. When Eli was bitten, I knew he was going to survive, even when they gave us the choice to shoot him. When the main group went into the freaking zombie hive, I knew they were all going to survive. When Blackstock came to the colony and tried to execute us and all hell broke loose, I knew everyone was going to survive (but Blackstock).

There. Were. No. Stakes. NONE! None of them!

The closest thing we got to any sort of urgency was Brynn’s “death” early on. But that was it. That was the only major casualty in the book because PB played it safe in a zombie book of all books.

At the same time, PB tried to create an artificial sense of urgency by throwing different types of zombies into the mix. Types of zombies that the main group had never even seen before, even though the apocalypse had gone on for 21 years at that point, and two Solstices had already occurred since they happen like clockwork every 7 years. I don’t understand how not a single one of the people in our main group had never seen any of these variants.

And this goes without saying, but this artificial sense of urgency they tried to create with the variant zombies? It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Because the main character and love interests all had the most impenetrable plot armor in quite literally the entire app. I mean, Eli cheats death for Pete’s sake. He was on death’s doorstep from his bite (ON THE NECK, MAY I ADD, RIGHT BETWEEN THE HEART AND BRAIN) and still managed to survive and recover with no problem???? What????????

I get wanting to play it safe to an extent. This was a horror book that clearly had a lot go into making it. But you absolutely cannot be cautious in writing a zombie book. You simply can’t. Zombie media is absolutely notorious for killing off both main and side characters, whereas Wake the Dead only kills off side characters who otherwise don’t have much impact on the story.

Yes, some zombie media does get a happy, or at least, a realistically bittersweet ending. The Walking Dead comics, show, and Telltale series do. The Evil Dead does. 28 Days Later, I Am Legend, Zombieland all do. They have stakes which make us more invested, but also use those stakes in some way to tie up loose ends and give us an ending that really makes us think.

So yeah. As you said, anon, PB just played it too darn safe. And you can’t do that with zombie media. It’s not in the spirit of the genre, and its effect on the book quality was very evident.

[hamstermastersamster]

Finished first playthrough of The Quarry with my sis and bro-in-law.

When I originally played (and loved) Until Dawn, I knew what I wanted was another story like it with a new cast and more choice and nuance and variables to play with. The Dark Pictures Anthology didn’t really feel like it achieved this, with smaller, more compact stories that have overall just been a bit less compelling somehow (not helped by how many of them have ‘twist’ endings that just undercut all the spoopiness completely . . . ).

The Quarry, however, definitely delivered. Not all the choices determine whether or not the cast live or die; a lot of them just affect the way it plays out, or the relationships between the characters. You can encourage romances, rivalries, arguments, friendships etc. and it all helps shape the feel of ‘your’ playthrough. And you get to see some classic horror names like Ted Raimi and David Arquette in new roles!

UD had a great story, and The Quarry . . . is also really fun :3 Despite the mystery of WHAT being relatively easy to figure out early on, the HOWs and WHYs weren’t obvious and materialised over time at a good narrative pace. Being adults with lives, me and my family ended up playing this over 2.5 separated sessions but we were always itching to get back to it and see what happens.

(Time being of the utmost importance whenever my sister is involved, since she is medically unable to resist the urge to google and spoil herself if kept waiting too long to find out what happens xP)

We ultimately lost 2 of the main cast - Jacob, who was one of my 2 least favourite characters so I didn’t bemoan too much, but also Kaitlyn whom i DID like and appeared to lose due to a responsiveness issue with a critical QTE, which I absolutely swore about >:[

I don’t expect to like every character in a horror movie story like this, but some I thought I would really dislike ended up growing on me a lot. Dylan ended up becoming my low-key fave and HE survived (mostly >_>’ ) so that’s the important thing :3 Ryan was also a star boy.

We may try for a ‘perfect’ replay, time permitting (so probably not Dx but if not, I may do it solo!). The main game complaints I had were:

- The camera is so close to the character’s head at some points in the game play sections that you literally cannot see what the fuck you are doing or where you are going, or where there even IS to go. Hidden secrets = good. Secrets you can’t find because you can’t see ANYTHING = shit. I don’t know if the intention was to create claustrophobia but it didn’t; it just meant I COULDN’T SEE SHIT.

- Some of the environments were so dark with no character-held light source that, again, you could not see shit. Pitch black environments are not fun to explore, end of.

- How annoying it is to be afraid to explore in the ‘wrong’ direction in case you accidentally progress the plot. In a small number of scenes, they let you explicitly choose when to move on, but a lot of the times, clicking the wrong thing would just mean missing out on stuff.

- The ending approach (not our specific ending that we achieved, just in general) sucked. The ‘epilogue’ just gives you a character card for each character saying whether they lived or died, and a line about their ongoing circumstances if they lived. Then we jump to a really long, annoying, boring faux podcast about the whole thing that plays over the credits depending on how much evidence you collected. And that’s it! We spent all that time choosing not just the actions of the cast, but also how they interacted with each other, the relationships they built with each other. We don’t even get to find out how they reacted to each other’s fates? Or what happens to them immediately afterwards a la the interviews at the end of Until Dawn? HUGE letdown. Game devs i am once again begging you to please give us emotional and not just mechanical/functional payoff.

Regardless of their flaws, Supermassive’s horror games remain one of my big recommendations for couch-co-op fun/scares. Although not everyone in the room can ‘play’ (the later games do have some multiplayer options we haven’t tried to be fair because the single player format works for us), everyone can participate in the decision-making and everyone can jump at the jump scares and everyone can cry when we screw up a QTE, and it’s just a great time xD Think of it like an interactive horror movie so with all the added stress of knowing you’re responsible for who lives and who dies. Wholesome family content!

[cassandrasimplex]

I'm really curious what influences this. My first playthrough Tav is romancing Astarion (kind of?) and practically had to do nothing at all to get him to resist ascension; I mean that literally, choosing not to interfere with his choices whenever there was an option to "do nothing".

CW for brief mention of being a child abuse survivor, no details.

I ended up in "I don't know what's going on with us" territory with Astarion despite not really trying to romance him (maybe because of the earlier romance bugs? maybe he's just really turned on by Tav turning down Gale? maybe he's that into hugs?) and at every step that seemed significant, I chose either the "Stay silent and let him do his own thing" option or the "What you want is what matters" option if the first wasn't available. Dude just spent 200 years having his every action dictated by a sadist. He deserves time to figure out who he is when he gets to be in control of himself instead.

I got an incredible scene when we found Cazador's prisoners and let Astarion take the lead talking to Sebastian. Neil Newbon is a god among actors and a consummate master of timing and silences in that scene. I am in awe, absolute awe.

I basically just stood back and let Astarion have his moment, whatever he needed the moment to be, before the fight with Cazador. He really seemed 100% determined to ascend instead.

Then after the fight I went with "If you (do this thing) (something you won't like will happen)" rather than focus on the other spawns' fates, which seemed to turn the next objection into "if I do this to help you they'll all die" -- I could have sworn that was "if you do this they'll all die" in the previous set of choices, and making it my own objection felt less manipulative -- and then the option that really hit me in the gut was the "you can be better than Cazador". He still seemed determined to ascend, so I went with supporting whatever he chose for himself.

Then he surprised me.

Actually, that's not quite true. The game surprised me.

I'm a survivor of child abuse. For a couple of decades of my adult life, my abuser was the true South of my moral compass. Anything I knew they would have done, I'd throw myself as far as I could, as hard as I could, in the opposite direction. I had a decade of nightmares in which dreams started with "I've just done something exactly like they would have. Already done, can't be changed. Now how do I cope with that?" I was in my 40s before I could look in a mirror without tensing up because the family resemblance made my face look like a literal monster in the mirror to me. Turning into the monster who hurt me has been... a pervasive fear.

So I was thinking to myself, when I chose "You can be better than Cazador," that this felt like the only line that really mattered. It's been my fucking life. It ought to matter here. But after that, I just said I'd support whatever he chose for himself and resigned myself to Evil Astarion.

Not only did Astarion choose not to become another Cazador, despite every previous indication that he intended to ascend, he talked later about "breaking the cycle" and how becoming a Cazador clone would not have truly been freedom and I, not as Tav but as a player who doesn't usually get too immersed in this stuff in games, just sat there and had a long happy-cry. Then I slept seven hours straight through with no nightmares, which happens... maybe once or twice a year?

Later, I saw a quote from Astarion's character writer; I'll leave off the most spoilery part, but he said he wanted people to react to Astarion's story by saying, "The game was more real than I ever expected it to be."

Well. Buddy. Lemme tell ya.

I'm sure it won't be as simple as "if you tell Astarion to break the cycle, he'll choose not to ascend" despite all the complex choices leading up to it. But I'm deeply curious how much influence that one line has, because Astarion's writer reallllllllly knew what he was doing here, and more generally curious how much Tav just standing back and letting him figure his life out for himself affects his strength to resist that temptation when the moment comes.

Just saw a clip of unromanced Astarion's dialogue post camp attack by his siblings and the difference is small but significant when you try to dissuade him from ascending.

After his usual dialogues justifying his inclinations towards ascension,

unromanced Astarion says this:

and, romanced Astarion says this:

Before reaching Baldur's Gate, there's a missable dialogue where if you tell him you're worried and want him to be safe, he will say:

"It matters to me as well. I want to be able to protect you, too."

This goes in tandem with the other times you can dissuade romanced Astarion from the ritual and he'll say that when he gains power, you'll gain power and that you're both a team (I am not sure if he says this without romance as well, but I doubt he does).

It's interesting that he's so quick to agree with you against ascension as a friend, but as a romanced Tav I was surprised by how stubborn he was with wanting to ascend. He seemed hell bent on ascending no matter what I said and I was worried by the time the choice comes I'd have stacked enough 'you failed to dissuade him,' points like The Witcher 3 or something. I had thought at first that romanced Astarion would be less enclined to be evil but it makes sense that he'd be more willing to turn to the darker, easier path to because it's quick power and power can protect those you love.

If romanced, he'll say that he's doing this so he and I are safe for good. Other instances where you tell him he shouldn't ascend he says something similar along the lines of "We'll both be powerful. We'll both be safe. This is for us both. We're a team." It's almost like this is his way of ensuring you both stay together. He doesn't know any better. Having a lover makes him even more motivated to ascend because he has someone to protect now. He needs to ascend not only to take revenge on Cazador, not only for his freedom, not only to walk in the sun but also because if he is all powerful nothing will ever harm you nor him. If you become his spawn, he'll never have to worry about one day living without you once your mortal life span is over. He only wants safety and security after having none of it for so very long, and having you to protect makes his resolve even stronger.

So in the end his ascension or non-ascension really does come down to Tav alone, romanced or unromanced.

[nulfaga]

i want to do an absolutely miserable "everyone dies and suffers the whole way down" me playthrough too. so i spent some time yesterday looking at the me2 suicide mission and carefully plotting how to leave only the bare minimum amt of squad members alive (2, fewer than that and shepard herself will also cark it). weird amount of math involved. ideally those 2 survivors would be those who can meet an even more horrible fate in me3 (jack and tali for instance. there are many more squad members who can die in me3 but they tend to be heroic/meaningful deaths). liara is basically immortal and vega doesn't show up enough to be endangered but you can take them along to the final battle and (so i understand) if your war assets are absolutely shit tiny then they'll be vaporized by a reaper beam w/ no more ceremony.

i think the funniest option of all (you know in a cosmically evil kind of way) is to have an LI you scrupulously keep alive thru me2-3 (or 1-3) and then at the culminating moment they just get zapped and that's it.

here's my sample plan (choosing garrus as the cursed immortal cause i've been told i never gave him a fair shake. what fairer shake is there than this)

this is not "meet as few characters as possible" btw this is "kill everyone" so while not recruiting them at all would yield the same results what we're after is a pipeline of recruit -> kill (in the most tragic/unsatisfying way possible, wherever possible). death and despair in the milky way etc ME1:

-leave ashley/kaidan at virmire (in practice it doesn't matter who) -don't kill wrex (for now) -kill the rachni queen (though it doesn't make a big difference; grunt won't be alive to sacrifice himself w/ the aralakh company) -don't disrupt geth communications on virmire (kirrahe dies)

ME2:

-don't recruit kasumi or zaeed (they fuck up the numbers for the suicide run. i'm sure there's a way to bring them and successfully kill them while keeping the 4 squadmates we need alive but i haven't figured it out) -destroy maelon's data -let morinth kill samara (if possible. otherwise it doesn't make a difference past the suicide run) -successfully complete loyalty missions for jack, garrus, tali & mordin -keep DISloyal: miranda & grunt -doesn't matter (as in: do the loyalty mission if you like, but they'll die regardless): jacob, samara, thane, legion -get the silaris armor upgrade, but NOT the thanix cannon or cyclonic shields -do as many missions as possible between the reaper IFF and hitting the collector base (to ensure crew death) For the suicide mission:

-silaris armor means jack survives (for now) -no shields means legion dies (don't bring him to the cargo bay fight, or someone else will die instead and throw off the numbers) -no thanix cannons means thane dies

-assign jacob as the vent specialist (he dies) -assign samara/morinth as the fireteam leader (dead) -assign a loyal jack as the biotic specialist (no one dies!) -assign a disloyal grunt as the second fireteam leader (dead) -assign a disloyal miranda to escort the crew (dead) -this should leave tali, mordin, garrus & jack (all of whom should be loyal!) -leave garrus and jack to hold the line (no one dies) -bring tali and mordin to the final fight (no one dies)

-destroy the collector base -shepard survives with 4 crew members

ME3:

-pick every renegade option and DON'T visit the virmire survivor in the hospital after the mars mission -ignore the grissom academy mission (jack gets recaptured by cerberus) -later on, fight jack as a cerberus phantom (dead) -kill the rachni queen, or leave her alive and let her betray you idk -don't warn the krogan -sabotage the genophage cure; shoot m...god forgive me. shoot mordin when he tries to fix it himself (dead. rip) -since wrex is alive, he'll know about the sabotage; he will fight you and get killed (dead) -during the coup in priority citadel 2, don't try to persuade the virmire survivor, just shoot them (dead) -kill falere at the ardat-yakshi monastery -don't do the rannoch: geth fighter squadrons mission -during priority: rannoch, let the geth upload the reaper code and don't try to persuade/warn the quarians (tali dies) -gather NO war assets. you need under 1600 EMS. -bring 2 squadmates. at this point you can choose between garrus, liara, vega and edi. and javik if he's there. -i recommend bringing garrus and liara, the last surviving LIs, your ride-or-dies from the very beginning. (they will be vaporized by a reaper beam) -you should have only one choice for the crucible: destroy. because of your low EMS, shepard dies and this choice also destroys the mass relays as well as all life on earth.

-fin-

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Ventrue Things ~

I finished a Camarilla Ventrue run of VTMB. Mostly, the only thing Ventrue these days know how to do is Dominate, run screaming, eat hot chip, and lie, and [high falsetto voice] here’s a list of other nonsense I discovered:

PC’s name is Christina; she’s a Dominatrix because I’m bi. Her sire was one of her clients, and she’s actually very, very angry about his death. She doesn’t mind being a vampire. She’s Wiccan and part of a coven

In this Camarilla run, I decided I would only do quests given by Camarilla members. My justification was that, while Christina is intelligent and curious about lore, she focuses on tasks that immediately relate to her and her goals. She’s not curious about others; won’t go out of her way to talk to them. She’s not a bleeding heart, like my other PCs, and she believes in the Camarilla’s laws. She just hates LaCroix for killing her sire. Her plan during the game is to curry as much favor within the Cam as possible and cozy up to LaCroix so she can stab him.

Enough backstory

Nonsense time

Smiling Jack laughs at you if you don’t eat a rat in the tutorial. LOL. The Ventrue dialog is like “I could barely choke down the homeless man: please don’t make me eat a rat!”

The blood in the Santa Monica haven’s fridge is now blue blood. Does regular blood make Ventrue sick? I was too scared to experiment.

[spots Mercurio] I am going to steal that ghoul

Rosa: The people you’re looking for are up there. Christina, assuming Rosa is a Cam agent: Okay, thanks, bye

Never spoke to the Thin-Bloods again (sorry Lily baby ;-;)

Everyone except Julius still leaves when the PC reaches Hollywood

If you try to feed on Julius, he WILL kick you in the head and you WILL glitch into the fire, be on fire; run away screaming in Prada

You can skip the whole basement of the Ocean House Hotel if you manage to jump over the hole in the staircase???? Like?? You mean the spookiest fucking level has been optional this whole time I”M

[ghost appears] [Christina smacks it with an axe] None of that.

Club girls speak to Christina and I’m on the FLOOR

Therese “kills” Jeanette, even though I had enough oompa to make that not happen.

Therese joins the Camarilla and says she’s in good position to be the next Prince??? Hello??? Where is our Prince Voerman ending????

Went straight to LaCroix, called him “sir,” and he name-dropped Napoleon.

LaCroix tells Christina to go visit the Anarchs. She blows the Anarchs off (Nines made a growly face, Damsel dialog yowl-exited out after I asked if she wanted to join the Cam; Skelter threatened to murder me twice). When LaCroix told Christina that, while he admired her Cam loyalty, she must listen to her enemies to understand what they wanted, it felt like he was actually being a good sire and mentor.

That’s weird.

When Christina asked for his history, he very carefully explained his lineage, like the important part of Ventrue culture it is.

Overall, I found LaCroix-being-nice-to-me extremely unsettling.

Sir. Stop smiling at me, sir. Stop being impressed I don’t ask for money. STOP MAKING ME UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE LIKE YOU, SIR.

In contrast, LaCroix sounded genuinely betrayed at the end

Also made it more obvious when he started to lose track of his marbles

Ventrue PC seems juuuuuuust tall enough for her forehead to glitch into the ceiling of literally any confined space

The dirty Elizabeth Dane policeman didn’t psspspspsp at Christina so the whole ship was 15 white-knuckled minutes of making police dance and scuttling about

There is!!! A lot less!!! Talking in this game!!! Than I remember!!! She is only good at talking and ordering people around i am bEGGING

All EXP goes to Dominate and making Christina extremely charismatic and buff.

Ventrue himbo????

Beckett un-himbo-ifies her

She insults Beckett on their first meeting, spitting out “What do you want, wolfie?!” I thought this was appropriate because she died like, 4 times on that warehouse mission and was Extremely Stressed And Under Duress

Beckett’s response of “Oh, you’re too young to have mouthed off to the truly old ones yet.” makes his later snide remark of “the young ones are so temperamental” 900% funnier. Yeah, LaCroix! Beckett thinks I’ve grown and am now more mature than you! XD

Missions involving sex workers hit different when you’re a sex worker.

Christina was incandescent with rage at the Brotherhood

Grout’s mansion mission was a lot of “I have no interest in this nonsense.”

For the first time ever, I didn’t kill anyone during the Museum quest! This is because Christina ran very fast and Dominated every guard as quickly as possible. Every single fucking guard knew she was there, but could do nothing about it, because they were dancing. The door to the sarcophagus locked (it will do this if too many guards are agro), but locked doors are no match for noclip hack.

Entertaining image of a tall woman absolutely blasting into this museum room and Beckett tackling her to the floor like wait! I must snark at you! You are legally obligated to speak with me!

Isaac is still somehow a pretty chill guy to work with if you’re Camarilla.

Christina didn’t visit VV or Ash. Interestingly, Ash didn’t show up at the hunter monastery later. Did he just die in his club? Is he still there, waiting, deciding?

Christina @ Andrei: what the fuck is this shit

“I don’t care. It’s ugly. Clean it up.”

SEWERS.

Not as bad as I was expecting

Did take shortcut, run away from fights, ducked out in the middle for a snack, and bring 7 blue blood packs tho

Gary threatened to shred her face with a cheese grater, which I thought was Toreador only dialog?? It must be connected to the Appearance Stat. Which Christina has maxed out.

When Heather became Christina’s ghoul, I was delighted because I thought this meant Christina would always have fresh blood.

No

If you ask to feed on her too soon after the last time, Heather says she feels light headed and wants to lie down. The dialog exits out

I love you, Heather bb

Perfected the art of nudging NPCs into corners

Mitnick’s quests now feature Enforced Nap Time for all guards

Seriously, Dominate is ridiculously powerful, hooooly shit. I get why people like it. I also like it when people do things I ask them to do.

Christina can’t sneak, but she CAN strongly encourage everyone to choke on their own tongues.

Very high contrast in the beginning of the game: 2 punches would knock her over, but anyone she spoke to would obey immediately and without question

Chinatown goes by ridiculously fast if you can’t sneak and don’t do any sidequests besides Mitnick’s.

For the first time ever, Zhao survived! This is because Christina made him take a nap.

He just told her to leave

You’re welcome, my good dude

IDK if it’s a game glitch, but Christina would vocalize? In battle, she grunts with effort and pain.

Got to the point where I kept expecting Dominate dialog in every interaction and would get disappointed if it didn’t show up. What do you mean I have to actually convince people? That’s lame.

Christina was polite and charming to Ming Xiao, who also conveyed a deeper betrayal than normal at the end. ;-;

I promise to give you a Ventrue boy toy soon, Xiao

Finale arc quests went by VERY FAST because Christina can’t sneak for shit. Just run in, Dominate blazing

You can skip the outside bit of the Hallowbrook Hotel if you find the open door on the top level what the fuuuuuuuuuCK

[“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” plays while Christina wipes out the Sabbat in 10 minutes]

Andrei disappeared mid-fight and didn’t come back until I complained that only I was allowed to run away from boss fights

I’m categorizing “triggering the interaction to save Heather” as something quite difficult to do. The timing has to be just right. I’ve missed it twice now. BUT hacking into the game to save her is easy.

I love you, Heather bb

Final Beckett talk had the vibe of “You’re a very different person than me, but you’re also High Humanity and trying to do good. You don’t deserve to die.”

Damsel threatens to kick the shit out of Christina and is extremely reluctant to tell her where Nines is

“Out of all people, they send you? All right, let’s just talk terms.” - Nines because Christina was short with him one (1) time

WEREWOLF HARD

You can just?? Walk out of your haven?? Without speaking to Jack at all???

I didn’t do that

But I could have

[”Dust in the Wind” plays while Christina kills entire Camarilla hit squad in 3 minutes]

You can visit Mercurio and Trip on your way out of Santa Monica??

Mercurio makes no comment on the blood hunt. Business as usual with him. This is fine.

Christina: I’m SO going to adopt that ghoul. And perhaps Isaac can be convinced to part with Romero...

(For the first time ever, my PC boinked Romero. Twice, to receive the break up email)

This is definitely a glitch, but Christina brushed up against Caine, and a worried voice said, “Are you all right?” It sounded like the same voice actor, but a higher pitch?

Always nice to think about Caine demonstrating care

Christina asked Caine who he is, and Caine replied that he “gets people where they’re going. [He’s] a driver,”  which is a nice nod (lol) to both his literal job as a driver and as a shepherd/creator/god to Kindred. Caine creates and makes fate.

Caine triple checks with Christina that she’s sure Strauss won’t betray her. Thanks, Vampire Dad. :’D

For some reason, only other Ventrue guarded LaCroix’s tower. I wonder if this is intentional. Like all the other Camarilla Clans backed Strauss and left? So only LaCroix’s Ventrue lackeys remain? Anyway, it created some weird moments where Christina fought her double.

KILL YOUR DOUBLE

Sheriff laughed in haughty joy that he was to kill Christina. I don’t remember him laughing in other playthroughs.

Christina ruining Caine and Jack’s prank oh noes

[rantheon]

the bakarina anime is done! it’s just a drop in the ocean that is the otome isekai genre so these are some recs + what you need to know about them. i just listed most of my favs otherwise it’d be too long :p

in no particular order. includes some non-isekai ones too. needless to say most of these aren’t completed yet

my next life as a villainess: all routes lead to doom

using this to plug that there’s more bakarina content in the form of light novels, manga and 3 spin-offs

an observation record of my fiancee - a self-proclaimed villainess

told in the pov of prince cecil, whose fiancee bertia straight up tells him she’s a villainess of an otome game from her past life

if you ever wonder what jeord from bakarina might be thinking half the time, this is probably close. cecil is the same kind of prince who initially finds things bored and predictable until they met the mc

the things cecil would get up to for bertia? hoo boy

also the way the mangaka draws hair is addicting to look at

the villainess cecilia silvie doesn’t want to die so she decided to crossdress

the title speaks for itself~ after remembering an otome game she played in her past life, cecil (previously cecilia) is now the one capturing the hearts of the academy ladies instead

it’s fairly new so there’s not much of it yet :c but it’s pretty interesting

the original otome game had a whole rpg combat system going on and i’m hyped to see how it’s gonna lead the story

the Angelique vibes are strong in this one

the villainess wants to marry a commoner

isabella used to play an otome game in a past life, but she was really only interested in a side character named ursch. and then one day she finds him in her mansion garden

her past life self is such a mood - i too have 100% otome games in hopes of side characters getting hidden routes but alas

definitely deserves the ‘video game’ tag. isabella can see status screens and character stats/skills etc, and all the gacha rewards and grinding transferred over after her reincarnation. she’s the isekai female protag we’ve always wanted

seriously the main ship is too op for their own good aha

deathbound duke’s daughter

in a past life, erika only managed to finish 2.5/7 scenarios of an otome game thanks to an unlucky encounter with knife-kun. with the different flags of her impending doom approaching, she takes things into her own hands years before the game events start

very fantasy-oriented (the most on this list) and pretty action-packed, once you get past the game exposition in the first 3? chapters

the world building is brilliant, from the hafan mages to the aurelian alchemists, and there’s beasts and wands and spells and dnd stuff sprinkled in

the cast has quite interesting dynamics and interwoven plotlines, and they’re all dorky in their way :>

beware of the villainess

melissa remembers a novel from her past life and desperately tries to cut off contact with the male leads, but they still make her life hell & she rages

she’s just so done with everyone and you can’t help but relate to her

definitely the funniest on this list XD melissa and her reactions takes the cake but even the shit characters are hilarious in their own way

there’s also a lot of parodies to memes etc & best of all, there’s cussing. all the shits and fucks. a whole lot of it

it’s great

death is the only ending for the villainess

penelope wakes up as the villainess from a game she’d been playing in her past life, only right now it's on the hardest difficulty where death is literally everywhere. thus she tries, well, not dying

what’s cool about this is that penelope has access to the original game system. she can see menus, choice options etc. the male leads even have affection percentages floating above their heads :> which is always cool to see (and what i’m a sucker for)

but it’s definitely one of the darker ones on this list. iirc there’s depictions of violence, abuse, drugs and then some. just a fair warning

the daughter of albert house wishes for ruin

upon realizing that she’s the villainess from a past-life otome game, mary decides to stay as one. chaos ensues

i love this manga so much, everyone is so quirky and there’s something to laugh about on almost every page. the story almost feels self-aware of itself and just lets the characters do whatever. like ride bikes

addie is so cute ;o;

it’s definitely something everyone should experience

i’m a villainess daughter so i’m going to keep the last boss

one of the finished ones!

post-annulment, aileen pulls a Lisa Tepes and asks the demon king claude to marry her. he refuses. hijinks ensues

mostly on the fantasy side, as it builds on the world of the monsters

the cast is pretty fun! aileen’s smart, funny and pretty competent in her own right. plus she and claude are positively adorable together

milady just wants to relax

post-annulment, ronia decides to open a cafe in the countryside. it later becomes the frequent hangout of a beastmen mercenary group, who are intensely feared by the townsfolk

well... beastmen. that’s all you need to know /wink

okay, that aside, it’s just as chill as the title suggests. ronia slowly makes friends she can trust, and the beastmen find a second home in the only cafe that’s willing to accept them. it’s pretty wholesome

the banished villainess! living the leisurely life of a nun making revolutionary food

despite actively trying to change her ‘villainess from a past-life otome game’ fate since childhood, elizabeth gets annulled, her noble title stripped, and is sent to a church in a neighboring kingdom. she enjoys it more than expected, despite the appearance of the ever watchful leonid

there’s plenty of 21st-century food like sandwiches, cotton candy leonid’s muscles <3

the entire cast is lovable, and can chris get an f for all the heart attacks leonid keep giving him

seduce the villain’s father

yereninovica (or just yerenica) realizes that she’s in the world of a novel she read in her past life, but as the aunt of said novel’s mc. after thwarting a kidnapping that’s basically the mc’s origin story, she takes it upon herself to also prevent the tragic death of emperor belgoat

a bit different since it switches the roles around (side character x side character) and goes into the “parent generation” of the original work

there’s also an interesting bit where the world seems to recognize her as a hijacker, and where that takes her, we’ll see in due time :o:

plus the way yeni habitually calls him ‘father’ cracks me up every time

transferred to another world but i’m the savior of an otome game

after a ritual gone wrong, “yamada tarou” (fake name) is stuck in the world of an otome game. the only way back is with a magical ring, normally obtained after becoming the lover of one of the male leads. he of course says no i’m going adventuring but the game doesn’t like that

it’s absolutely hilarious - the leads treat our mc like a heroine, and there’s a lot of otome tropes that are called out on/parodied. like the seiyuus’ names oh my god

tarou’s reactions are great and his appraisal skill is the funniest thing alive

endo and kobayashi’s live commentary on the villainess

in modern japan, endo and kobayashi start their playthrough of an otome game, which becomes a bit glitchy and odd. they discover that siegward, a male lead in the game, can hear what they’re saying. they use this chance to finally give lisolette a happier ending

much of the story’s focus is on the characters slowly warming up to lisolette, and a bit on endo/kobayashi’s irl relationship. despite being the primary drive of the story, lisolette herself hardly moves the plot - if you know what i mean

regardless it’s undeniably adorable

tearmoon empire

no isekai, more of time travel? chronoskimming?

mia wakes up 10 years in the past after being sentenced to death. now afraid of guillotine-kun, she strives to solve the issues in her kingdom that had previously led to her doom

a bit similar to bakarina in terms of concept: avoid death flags, unknowingly recruits the people she meets into her little saintess cult. the misinterpretation is very strong, and in brilliantly funny ways

it has really fun narration ngl especially in the light novel

of course, i’ll claim palimony!

to prepare for her annulment, yulia starts scheming recording her fiance’s meetups with the heroine to use as evidence. if you’re gonna lose a suitor, might as well get some money out of it, right? along the way she gets involved with rudonik, one of the male leads

no reincarnation. rather than an otome game, the villainess story comes from a book written by a side character, and the “heroine” just decided to play it out in real life

the cast together is a riot, and it’s entertaining to watch yulia only think in profits and every connection she can make to achieve it

the villainess’ slow prison life began with her broken engagement

no isekai, just a plain old villainess

post-annulment, rachel is sentenced to imprisonment. which she enjoys and is thoroughly, hilariously prepared for

everyone’s a little afraid of rachel and for good reason. it’s better to find out yourself through the LN or manga, but let’s just say that even the king doesn’t want to deal with her XD

the holy grail of eris

now this one is interesting, putting the villainess trope into a mystery ghost story. that said, no isekai either

our innocent heroine constance attends a party and encounters scarlet, an executed villainess from ten years ago. a body possession and some public embarrassment later, they decide to team up to solve the mystery that might be behind scarlet’s death

i mean, ghost villainess? sign me up

+ some honorable mentions

i favor the villainess (the heroine goes for the villainess- girls? girls? yes)

a bellicose lady got reincarnated (a delinquent reincarnates as a heroine; what a concept :o unfortunately there’s not a lot of english content for it yet)

it seems i got reincarnated into a yandere otome game (i like that the mc actively makes it so that game can’t ever happen the way it should; plus, yanderes are always interesting to study)

inso’s law (modern isekai, and quite cute!)

the reincarnated young lady aims to be an adventurer / holy guardian tiger (similar to deathbound duke’s daughter in that there’s more of a focus on the fantasy aspect)

expecting to fall into ruin, i aim to become a blacksmith (so far the only one with a shounen tag that i like; its main charm is probably the cast and their interactions with each other eliza best girl)

since i’ve reincarnated as the villainess’ father i’ll shower my wife and daughter with love (big big wholesome vibes)

level 99 villainous daughter (severely op lady who takes no shit from the people looking down at her, and regularly thinks about blowing up the academy within the first 4 chapters? hell yeah)

may i please just ask one last thing? (post-annulment, the mc literally punches everyone in the room; it’s great)

this is getting long now oops

edit: i also made a visual-friendly personally-tagged-by-me bookshelf here!

[preemshots]

so this post is two years old now and making the rounds again (which i love and i love reading your tags). after hundreds more hours of this game and digging around i want to add some of my additional thoughts since writing this, and my own vague theory about where it’s all going.

i’ve done many more playthroughs now with the perspective of assuming johnny’s body is a future plot point. my real theory isn’t so simple as “we’re gonna get johnny’s body back” or “real johnny is dead/alive” but… well… a secret third thing.

an ingenius mechanic of this game that CDPR wrote in through honestly brilliant narrative design (not even gameplay! just your basic interactive fiction writing!) is rewarding player curiosity with the potential to make informed choices. you can play this whole game without understanding the themes of the genre of cyberpunk simply because V is a character that does not know they are in a cyberpunk game. but WE know this, it’s the title of the game, even if we are not well-versed in the genre itself—and the real difference between V and johnny is that johnny also knows he’s trapped in a cyberpunk world. by the end of the game even if we have a good grasp on the universal cyberpunk themes V and johnny are fighting against, the narrative must eventually reach a conclusion dictated by V’s lack of awareness, and thus their archetype, the fool: either fight to maintain your narrow definition of “life”… or adapt to survive, become something not quite human and not quite artificial intelligence.

you are allowed to play this entire game without questioning johnny’s humanity, maybe becoming fond of this asshole in your brain, but ultimately remain confident that his fate is sealed because he already had his chance to be the main character once. he’s even willing to absolve players of guilt for choosing themselves in the pistis sophia when he offers to die for you. eventually we do have to confront cyberpunk’s themes, standing inside mikoshi, when becoming a construct is inevitable…but even then you can run back and hide in your original organic flesh that no longer wants you. CDPR offers every excuse, says you are welcome to play a V that does not have time to consider the humanity of artificial intelligence/robotic characters… but that wouldn’t be very cyberpunk of you, would it?

some of the most important quests in this game are the ones so lightly disguised as fun side quests because they’re our training wheels for V to explore the inevitability of AI as living things. brenden the SCSM, who gets wiped because we can’t save him in time. a funny fluke of programming, sad to be terminated but inevitable due to the rules of society towards AI.

which leads to the quest that i think is our biggest hint of what’s going on because it’s potentially parallel to johnny’s situation, especially given how desperate he is by the end to influence your decision on how to handle it: delamain and his rogue cores. a bunch of copies of one AI personality that have developed completely different desires from their origin/creator, not due to being hacked or some error as del presents initially, but simply because they’re alive and grew in their own directions while being cabbies of night city. and yes, the quest is a vehicle (pun intended) for making references to other famous AI in popular media, but i think that’s done deliberately to disguise the point, turning player discussion away from the real meaning and reducing it to “omg glados voice”, a wildly meta tactic on CDPR’s end that preys upon our shallowness for how we engage with media that references other media. they do this the entire game, guys. it’s one of my favorite things.

ignoring that bait, we’re left with a serious issue, which is that johnny almost begs you not to reset delamain and destroy all the copies and their memories. because he himself is one. your alternatives are: free the copies by killing the core or merge them back into a single being you have the hacking stats for it. if you go for the first alternative, you are later rewarded with snippets of them enjoying their lives, but no matter the direction you decide, there are no real difference in material quest rewards to qualitatively influence your decision making.

so here’s where i think this could go:

if we do find johnny’s body, what if another copy of his engram has been uploaded into it? what if he never died or was revived a long time ago and we find the “original” johnny silverhand hamming it up with nomads somewhere? what if there are bunch of copies of johnny that have been going around on relics annoying other people? in the “where’s johnny” comic there is this topical moment where thompson is confronted by a bunch of goofy johnny silverhand impersonators (who are most definitely NOT johnny) who call themselves the silverhands, hinting at the possibility and how ridiculous it could be. if the johnny we enjoyed exploring night city with and helped change for the better is only one of many, i know he’s the only johnny that matters to me. but what of a V that doesn’t particularly care about cyberpunk themes, who treats johnny as their sidekick, and has reasonably reached a conclusion that they should be protecting their individual original identity and sense of self at all costs? and they have to weigh a sudden appearance of the original REAL johnny against some copy that was funny, yes, charming, yes—but also fundamentally inauthentic on the scale they have chosen to uphold. knowing johnny’s nature, especially dealing with one that is particularly an asshole because he believes himself to be the penultimate most original johnny of them all, he’d absolutely enjoy condemning a copy of himself. in that case, original hard reset plan from delamain holds up as an option here—simply get rid of the misbehaving copies.

in ghost in the shell, major kusanagi asserts that she doesn’t fear being a copy of something else in the slightest: it’s the sum of her lived memories and experiences that make her unique, and likewise should make our johnny on the relic the most authentic to us and V, because like any living thing, he’s changed from knowing V and experiencing life at all. plus he and V are effectively merged in the brain due to the function of the prototype relic. delamain’s quest offers up our options for how to resolve a scenario where copies and an original fight for authority over themselves, which at least provides some hope for a happy ending… or at least an ending where V must decide once and for all if they value of human life versus a copy of a human life when they too are technically a construct now.

unlike johnny and v, who could not consent to it, in ghost in the shell major kusanagi barely questions the consequences of losing her sense of self and chooses to merge with the AI known as the puppetmaster, embracing a new identity as something new and different—but still treated as fundamentally her by batou, her closest companion. by the end of cyberpunk 2077, no matter who consciously walks out of mikoshi, it was asserted the whole game that johnny and v have been merged since the end of act 1 when the relic rebooted v’s brain. two souls merging in one body is some truly cyberpunk, romantic ass shit, even if V cannot see it and mocks a reverse situation in beat on the brat when they have to fight the pair of boxers that claimed to be one person split into two bodies, linked mentally. i personally could be happy with johnny and v sharing a body forever! but the game doesn’t allow this in the current “endings” for good reason—and that’s a whole another post for another day. but if the delamain parallels are true, and our hacking stat is high enough, there’s always the potential to be reunited and merged together again later. that’s another potential real ending to this game.

…but why stay in one body together when there appears to be a spare for johnny lying around somewhere?

which brings us the final option. if given the chance: i’ll happily kill the original johnny silverhand to shove our johnny into his body. in fact, i hope i get to.

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it’s time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

Keep reading

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

📓

Hi Bones! You're getting the Big P4 Angst Idea! And it's going under a cut cause it's kind of A Beast even in summary form. Title in my head is Guilty Until Proven Capable or possibly just The Second Time Around. Fair warning, this is gonna get a little rambly.

So this one's a Persona 4 fic inspired by the handful of NG+ fics I've read that play with new game plus as a time loop for the protagonists because that's already a juicy concept. Specifically, it takes place at the beginning of the second time through events after getting the bad ending on December 3rd, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, Bad Ending. Narukami wakes up in the Velvet Room the day before he's supposed to leave town and is basically told "you done fucked up, we're gonna give you another shot, but be careful what you try and change." Naturally, after the losses that happened and the evil fog deep unease lingering over town over the three months between making That Choice and leaving town, he jumps right at the chance to fix things. Wakes up on the train going into Inaba and starts the whole cycle over fresh. Things go as expected for most of the first couple of days.

And of course, as is the nature of time travel as a narrative device, the rules and limitations don't get Really Explained until he fucks something up and tries to change too much. Specifically, he tries to prevent Saki Konishi's death.

Specifically, he succeeds in preventing Saki Konishi's death.

And spends the day riding that high until the next morning where he meets up with her again, feels incredibly vindicated that he's already doing better when the bond starts forming and that means she's safe, and... hold up... Magus Arcana? That sounds an awful lot like Magician. And Yosuke's missing from school. Another body's been found. And he knows what's coming at the school assembly, knows what's about to be announced, and somehow seeing it coming makes it so much worse when the principal announces that Yosuke Hanamura has been found murdered. The only thing worse than your best friend being murdered is feeling responsible for it. Even worse than that is not even being able to mourn him properly because at this point you've technically only known him for 3 days.

The second time around, it's Saki Konishi at his side going in to investigate the second victim's death. The second time around, it's not the liquor store in a distorted version of the shopping district but the break room of a dilapidated Junes where Yosuke's last thoughts about the town he hates and the girl who almost makes it worth staying there hang in the stale air and summon the worst parts of the person at Yu's side. The second time around, it's a lot harder to forgive those darkest parts when her shadow talks about how glad she is that he's finally out of her hair and how she only wanted to avenge his death to assuage her guilt at feeling that way.

Harder, but not impossible. She awakens to her persona, Ayame, and again, things proceed mostly as normal.

Next trip to the Velvet Room, the rules get explained: the true victims will always die even if it's not the same ones every time, but not every death that occurred last time was that of a true victim; be careful changing too much from last time lest the team go in just as blind as the first time and twice as out of their depth; face the journey with eyes open not just to what happened as he remembers but as they unfold again, without grief clouding his purpose and they'll find their way to the truth. Easier said than done with one new death on his hands and Nanako's death looming in the future.

Some of the Social Links get shaken up, with Yosuke's father as the new Hanged Man arcana (helping him work through his grief at the loss of his son as he swings wildly between throwing himself blindly into his work, acting as a surrogate helicopter parent to Teddie, and second-guessing everything he's done since his son's death; is he giving his wife space to grieve by taking up the extra work at Junes or is he just hiding from her and his own pain? Is he helping Ted out of the goodness of his own heart because this weird kid needs someone to look after him and it's the right thing to do or is he trying to replace the son he's quickly realizing he didn't know anything about and was probably driving away with the constant moving? Heavy questions to drop on a 16 y/o part timer.) and Naoki replacing Yumi/Ayane as the Sun arcana (medical club rather than drama or band, partly because Naoki cornered him into joining so he could keep an eye on him and get a feel for Narukami's intentions with his sister, and partly because Yu is fascinated by how different the guy is when not numbed by a massive burden of grief he won't let himself process.) And of course letting Saki out of the fridge to be the Magus arcana, as kind and angry and complicated and flawed as the rest of the team, and just as good a friend to him as Yosuke was. With bonus opportunity to relay what Yosuke wanted to tell her about being special if they had both had the chance to live, her rank 10 leads to her awakening to the persona Kushinadahime.

And of course, this wouldn't be complete without addressing the lingering dread of what Yu is certain Nanako's fate is gonna be. Initially he debates keeping an arm's length between them or being The Best Big Bro On The Planet for her and settles on the latter because of course. Throws himself into it when he's not working on the balancing act between essentially metagaming and being complacent in the investigation. As November draws closer and closer, he eventually convinces himself to interfere like he did with Saki in the beginning. Because the most likely person to die in Nanako's place is his uncle and if he knew everything, it's the call Dojima would make. Because he's spent another year of watching his uncle brushing off his daughter and breaking her heart because he can't look her in the eye and deep down, it's hard to feel charitable seeing that and knowing what's going to happen, even knowing why. So he starts working on his argument to convince his parents to adopt Nanako when the time comes.

Through a little extra interference, it's Dojima who gets dragged into the tv alongside Namatame after he fails to kidnap Nanako, although she gets hurt in the struggle to take her and still ends up in the hospital. Rather than Namatame trying to flee after they wreck, it's Adachi who shoves them both in and convinces the team Namatame took Dojima as a hostage. Their shared dungeon is Purgatory rather than Heaven, and Yu's not sure if it's better or worse. Things mostly go as they do in game, although there's also a confrontation with Dojima's shadow before the big fight. It's rough, but they bring everyone home.

Of course, they get the choice right the second time around with Namatame, and when Nanako recovers from the fog everyone's relieved as hell, especially Yu. Y'know, until the guilt of "oh god I was willing to sacrifice my uncle and orphan my cousin to try and save her, what the hell is wrong with me?" hits him like a ton or twelve of bricks. Now that Dojima has seen everything in the other world, has seen firsthand that Yu was telling the truth, Yu confesses everything everything, including the fact that he's done this before and the choice he was going to make. It's, naturally, a lot to process.

The confrontation with Adachi is even angrier, in part because he's done more this time around, in part because of Yu's own guilt. But again, things go as they do in-game.

Playing with the idea of either the Orb of Clarity or Myriad Truths at the very end of the true ending giving everyone else the memories made in the previous "playthrough" or just. Letting that be one of those Protag Things They Never Tell The Team, either way it's gonna be bittersweet as hell because I'm a monster.

I have put so much thought into this work that's gonna be too damn big for me to ever finish if I ever tried to do it. But I need it. But that means I have to write it. Naturally, Andi, if you wanna take this into dms and yell at/with me over this idea, then by all means please do. It's a big enough longfic idea that that's probably the only way it's gonna see anything resembling the light of day.

Send me a 📓 (or other book emoji) and I'll talk about a fic idea I daydream about but haven't gotten around to writing!

[antepenultimatefantasy]

FFX Playthrough Part 17

The Father, the Son, and the Sexy Ghost

-So the Zanarkand Cloister of Trials is very Tetris

-It’s super cool how the tetris piece sounds end up making the Hymn of the Fayth as the puzzle solution

-Our reward? The glyph dragon!

-Ugh

-What? Auron? You’re sending her down to the Hall of the Final Summoning alone?

-Oh

-It’s an empty fayth of Lord Zaon, but zombie grandpa tells us Lady Yunalesca can help 

-Touché, Auron

-He’s got a point tho

-This party is 100% stubborn bitches

-Kimahri saying that he’ll go first to protect Yuna really hits you right where it hurts

-There! She! Is!

-Bikini ghost Lady Yunalesca! 

-She gets right to business: Yuna has to choose one of her guardians to die and become the fayth that will yield the final aeon

-Having played this game so many times now, it’s easy to see all of the places that this is alluded to in the game, but I remember how shocked I was the first time

-Seeing Jecht volunteer to die and hear his reasoning is also super emotional

-It’s also so touching that his biggest dream involves Tidus

-Also, when you think about it, it means that his bond with Braska was strong enough to make the final summoning work

-Bro, what if we’re such good bros that it kills Sin

-Bro...

-This scene is also pivotal to understanding Auron’s character development

-He’s bitter and inflexible because everything he has seen and everything he once believed shows him a truly broken world where everything is false and meaningless death is the fate that awaits even the most righteous

-Huge of Lulu and Wakka to instantly volunteer to sacrifice themselves

-Lol Tidus

-I’m glad Yuna finally tells Tidus to shut up about the “his story” thing and says that it’s her story too

-Like, dude? Stop man-spreading you narrative into Yuna’s summoner journey

-Anyway, Yunalesca drops the bomb that Sin is eternal and can never be fully defeated

-Wakka doesn’t take too kindly to that

-Lulu likes it even less

-I like how in many ways Lulu is way more religious than Wakka is, but is less vocal about it – it really shows in moments like this

-Damn, Yunalesca fucks baby Auron’s shit right up

-Yaasss!! Yuna!!

-Really though, this speech is such an emotional and powerful moment

-Especially because Yuna has just realized that her father essentially died for nothing

-She already knew that Sin came back and already accepted that her life would be worth 10 years of peace for her people

-IF

-Her death, and her father’s death, and the death of every other summoner (and guardian) put the people of Spira closer to a permanent peace

-Upon discovering that’s not true, she wastes literally no time and seems to have little internal conflict in deciding that the whole system is wrong and needs to be torn down

-She is basically mourning her father anew and still saying that she can not only defeat Sin for good, but that she can become the master of herself too

-That the whole point isn’t some shallow goal of making people feel good for a bit, but actually fundamentally changing the world

-Like she told Auron, she’s not afraid of anything anymore. Not death, not Sin, not a bikini ghost demi-god lady

-She just wants the thousand years of suffering and countless sacrifices to be worth it

-And if Yevon won’t make that a reality, then she’ll just have to do it herself

-Wakka and Lulu’s short convo about how they would never forgive themselves for running, even if they die is such a good moment of solidarity

-Love this team ride or die montage!

-Yunalesca’s transformation throughout the battle from beautiful oracle-like figure, to evil medusa demon is so perfect

-And a perfect representation of Yevon itself

-Nice and calming on the face, but truly corrupted beneath the surface

-Definitely feels a little weird after the battle though

-Like…we didn’t just kill God but it sort of feels like it

-I guess in the holy trinity model, we just killed the holy ghost?

-Welp. Dona is now officially the baddest diva in all Spira

-Oh, also Auron’s been dead this whole time. 

-Killed by the former baddest bitch in Spira

-And he promised Jecht to take care of Tidus

-Awww

-So, uh, Sin’s right outside when we leave

-Obviously miffed that we just killed the only way to kill him

-Lol Cid just flies right by him. He’s like 

-Onboard, the team can’t decide what to do now that they’ve, you know, fucked everything up

-Lol! Tidus totally knows he’s an idiot

-Yuna meeting Cid, the two exchanging no words, and Cid turning around so no one sees him crying it just so so good

-Kimahri is all about drinking respect yourself juice

-So the team decides to go to Bevelle to see what’s up, and also play Jecht’s favorite song to get him to chill

-It’s Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, obviously

-But unfortunately for this plan, the whole world map is open to me, and I’m all about sidequests!

-So this blog might get a little scattershot for a bit

-Sorry, plot!

[crystalelemental]

“kisant: I also think that if they combined 6+7 they should update the mechanics around supports and child units. Honestly, I don't think 7's supports should have been as restricted as they were in the first place, because I also missed on lore to focus on getting the pairing I wanted. A way to update the games for a remake would be to simply add more child characters in Roy's game, change Karla's recruitment to happen earlier in the game (there are other arenas before the one she appears in) and allow for platonic supports as well as romantic supports, because only being allowed to get one A support and one B support was pretty shitty. For characters like Rath, they could also add more female supports for him with existing characters.  After all, shadows of valentia also added supports between characters (there were none in the original game) and a ton of new mechanics, so a 6+7 remake should also update those.”

This is going to be a somewhat subjective take, but we are operating on entirely different wavelengths, because everything about this is exactly what I think is the worst possible outcome.

Let me start with a statement I have made before and will make again and again until I die: infinite supports are not inherently good.  I think Three Houses proved they can (mostly) be done well, but infinite supports cause you to lose things that finite supports have going for them that don’t often get acknowledged.  A big one just being a streamlined gaming experience and adding replay value.  Infinite supports don’t encourage doing anything different at any point when combined with the free battle system.  You just take like 10 hours out of your life to try and fill out to log, mindlessly beating unthreatening maps that just kind of exist for the sake of doing this exact thing.  Finite supports may mean you have to replay the game to get a different chain, but you don’t slow down your current playthrough to unlock them (unless you’re farming support by ending turn on a seize the throne map, which wasn’t the intended method anyway), and you now have a reason to play through the game again to get something different.  That hidden lore is meant to be hidden, it’s something you stumble upon in a later playthrough when you decide to go for Canas and Renault’s supports, as opposed to their other options.  There was something worth replaying the game for.  “Customizable kid units add replay value” I’ll get to that.

The other thing that’s lost is consistency.  I’ve been on and off replaying Birthright lately, and one thing that still stands out as a problem is that, with infinite supports, nothing ever comes of those supports.  When you have a character like, say, Oboro, whose main thing is hating Nohrians, and a bunch of her supports with Nohrian characters is about overcoming that, it kinda lessens the significance when you hit that A-support and she seems to have learned that lesson, only to start up the next C-support and be right back where you were before, as if nothing happened.  Three Houses also has this problem, I feel, at least when it comes to romance.  You have all these A-supports that end with shades of romance, and then you can just...not have their paired ending.  Getting a heartfelt moment that’s shared between the two characters, and then having each go on to have similar heartfelt moments with like four other romantic options, kinda cheapens the value of their dynamic.  Finite supports don’t have this problem.  When you limit supports, that A-support matters, and the fact that there’s variety aside from romance for baby purposes makes them more meaningful.

Look at Awakening, where this problem started.  Look at how vast that support log is, and tell me how much of it was meaningful, as opposed to empty joke supports or a desperate struggle to come up with a reason these characters are married now.  You have a character like Cordelia, who is decisively not over Chrom at all, marrying literally anyone but him, and you have to just deal with that throughout supports.  Or Tharja, who is obsessed with Robin but can marry other people because kid necessity, even though most of the time she barely has feelings for them at all.  Even with supports that are romantic, you get shit like Sumia just baking Chrom pies over and over and that’s enough for romance.  There’s no depth.  Awakening doesn’t have much in the same vein as Eliwood and Ninian or Nino and Jaffar.  And the reason?  Quantity over Quantity is the name of the game with kid units.

Awakening and Fates are too busy making customization for the kids that they forgot to make sufficiently meaningful supports.  It’s so severe that even the good pairings suffer.  Chrom and F!Robin is widely considered the most canon pairing, and even they have an entire support level dedicated to a joke about how Chrom walked in on her in the bath one time.  Supports suffer when you’re forcing a child system that demands variety, so adding more children characters and more support options to make children characters is going to mean support quality takes a hit.

Not to mention, again, how much that hinders the characters.  “We need more kid characters for Binding Blade, because that game didn’t have enough characters yet!  Quick, make Priscilla have a kid!”  So now, instead of the interesting dynamic she had where she rejects every possible love interest, we have to either re-write that A-support to be reciprocated (boring) or add in another S-support where she reverses that decision (stupid).  “Bartre needs to have Fir, better add other options!”  Cool, so we’re just tossing the whole aspect of Karel being her uncle, which is something explored and explained in Binding Blade.  Like why should Bartre talk to Karel at all if he didn’t marry his sister?  Oops, I guess it’s fine, we’ll just get rid of that touching moment of Bartre apologizing to him for her death.  Not like that was a great moment for character building, we have kids to make!  “We need Rath to have more options than just Lyn, let’s include Isadora as an option!”  Great!  Now the character who doesn’t have other romance options because she’s in love with Harken and believes he’ll return to her one day suddenly has the ability to just drop that aspect of her character entirely for the sake of making babies.  Like imagine turning her support with Legault from just an amicable thing where he’s reminiscent about the old Black Fang and feels the current army is comfortable around to go “Actually it was all because I want to make babies with you.”  Lame as hell.

And double lame because it removes the fact that he’s kinda flirting with Heath.  Sure, Heath isn’t reciprocating, but like...one of the nice things about Three Houses was that it could include gay pairing ending cards, because there were no kids.  You could have things like Petra and Dorothea, or Marianne and Hilda, and that’s just treated as an equally valuable and reasonable outcome.  All of that is dead instantly upon introducing kids, because you need multiple parent options or the system falls apart and stagnates.  And in making a wide enough variety of options, there’s just no room to leave a character with their gay pairing.  It just isn’t something they’d bother to include when the focus is on making children characters, so say goodbye to that.

There’s just...no good outcome with kids.  I like the Awakening kids, but ultimately it’s just not a good tradeoff with the current approach in Fire Emblem.  Genealogy kinda made it work, but only because that game didn’t even have supports.  I want the remake to include supports to develop people’s personalities, but I’m honestly worried they won’t come out that well because of the fixation on children.  Echoes added supports too, but like...okay, yeah, how well did those go?  Which ones do you really remember?  Because mostly fandom seems to remember Faye’s because of how much they hated hers, and maybe Genny and Sonya because it was cute.  Almost everything else often gets forgotten anyway.  So not exactly a great example on the benefits of adding a bunch of supports to a game that already had a strong system.

I know they’re going to add unlimited supports, though.  I know they will, because that’s been the way of things since Awakening.  I want to believe that, because they held true to a lot of the mechanics of Gaiden with Echoes, that they’ll do the same with the Elibe games.  But they won’t.  I just...really hope they don’t combine the games, because knowing that, there is absolutely no positive outcome for a combo game given the demands of a child system.

[bananasfosterparent]

Oh, no I wasn't implying that you felt that way. I was just presenting some other perspectives that sort of situation can present.

I agree, it's not inherently a contradiction to stop him, entirely depending on your Tav's viewpoint and belief. But my point is that your Tav might *not* be the one to talk him down, especially if they agree it is not something to be talked down from. For me, my Tav, and the narrative happening in my playthroughs, I agree that it felt wrong to talk him out of it because she had no place to. She had been encouraging him to do it and there was no reason for her to try to stop him because the ends justified the means for her.

And playing from that perspective, the thought shifts.

As for the 7007 souls, there's honestly no true "all good" answer to that. Sacrificing them or killing them in their cages is a cruel end to a majority innocent beings already met with a cruel circumstance. So, there's the morally and objectively "better" answer of letting them go and sending them to the Underdark.

Buuut at the same time, when this is done, they do attack people in the Underdark and people they run into on the way down. And some of them also die or went rogue and did their own thing.

(An epilogue letter you can get from one of the spawn)

Either way you choose, someone is going to die. Will it be an equal number? Probably not. Releasing them, they probably aren't attacking 7007+ people. But, then it goes back to Withers' question: "What is the worth of a single mortal life?"

To someone who values all life, if just one person dies, that isn't much different from thousands. A life is a life.

So there are morally grey spots in both endings. But obviously the evil ending of sacrificing them is a more brutal fate.

Not to mention, in every choice a person makes, someone will be slighted or unhappy. Everyone is a villain in someone's story. It's more a matter of what you/your Tav feels is the lesser or greater of the evils.

As for freedom, while Astarion could benefit from learning that lesson you talk about, there's also the fact that.... Like, who is Tav to be the one to teach him that? What gives them that authority? Even being in a romance with him isn't a reason, necessarily. They've barely known him (the game events happen over a few weeks or months at most) and they don't even know how to take care of their own issue(s), let alone knowing what's better for someone they just met.

Granted, whether they are right or wrong in their decision to help him do the ritual or to talk him out of it, that's up to the player and their Tav's personal beliefs/convictions, and perspective. But, even if they are right he shouldn't do it, do they have the right and authority to actually stop him? Hard to say. Just being "right" about it alone isn't enough reason to speak over someone's choices.

Stopping him from doing the ritual is an objectively "good" thing to do morally, but truthfully it's not a happy ending either. Both endings are bittersweet. Not doing the ritual is a bittersweet (heavier on the sweet with more casual romance) result, and doing the ritual is a bittersweet (heavier on the bitter for sacrificing 7006 souls who don't deserve it--not counting Cazedor) result.

Spawn Astarion route doesn’t sit right with me personally bc like…

Astarion’s whole romance arc is about learning to respect his autonomy! now tell him you know him better than he knows himself and he doesn’t really want what he says he wants.

is that not a little. a little bit fucking. Concerning ? to anyone else. okay

[randomwordsandstormydays]

A Long Road (WIP)

I’m not sure I’ll ever actually get around to finishing this fic, but I’d love some feedback. It’s going to be a full-length game playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas under my OC Riley Smith.

This is the first “section”, can’t really call it a chapter, but here it is.

///

Her hands are bound.

The ground is hard and cold.

Someone is digging near her feet.

These realizations trickle in slowly, like a sink with a leak that never stops dripping. Each new observation is a piece of a puzzle she’s desperately trying to assemble before the end. But the end of what?

She doesn’t fully remember how she got into this situation. One minute she was on the road, bright lights of the New Vegas Strip filling her vision, only a few steps away from completing her delivery. The next moment she’s being dragged on the ground by her ankles, head thumping against the Mojave dirt with every step the man tugging her along takes. There’s at least three other people leading the way, and a man behind her. A particularly rough bump and she groans at the pain and the whole party stops.

From somewhere up ahead a voice calls “knock her out again, ‘fore she can call for help,” and then a fist comes down to meet her face and everything goes black.

When they knocked her out the first time the sun had been setting, tinting the sky with purples and reds. On the road she could just make out the faintest sliver of light on the horizon. Now, the moon is high in the sky, bright and full. The sight of it makes her head hurt and she knows she’s got a concussion.

The brim of her hat hides her eyes from view and she takes in what she can. The sound of someone digging, the smell of cigarettes, and three pairs of shoes - two dirty and dusty from the road and wear, and one pair that looks nice, almost new by post-war standards. Then, people start talking.

“You got what you were after, so pay up.” The voice is rough, angry sounding.

The response is casual, like whoever says it isn’t afraid of the people around him, even though he’s clearly not one of them. “You’re cryin’ in the rain, pally.”

So this was a job, taking her out, not just a couple guys looking for an easy score. But what did the person who hired them want?

Her? She’s a nobody, just a courier who’s good at her job.

Her delivery? It’s possible, but if that was the case why not just leave her in the dirt outside the Strip, why drag her to wherever they are now?

A realization strikes her: they mean to kill her, bury her out here so no one knows where she is. So that her body can’t be stumbled upon. Something about this whole thing is off, what’s so important about her that her body can’t even be found?

Her mind flashes to Andrew. They’ve been together nearly a year. When she doesn’t come home he might come looking for her, and if he does, he’ll never find her.

Or will he think she left him and not even bother to try and track her down? It wouldn’t surprise her. She’s always been a little flighty, hard to nail to one spot. The only reason she didn’t bounce out of her relationship is that Andy never tried to keep her tied down. Never complained that her job kept her on the road five days a week, only held her a little tighter every time she stumbled through the door, road worn and dusty. He probably won’t even look for her, they love each other, sure- but he’s not a traveler, not a fighter, not an adventurer. She’s positive he’ll miss her, he loves her after all, but she also wonders how long it’ll take him to move on once he realizes she’s never coming back.

Her heart hurts when she thinks of his face. Will he cry? Or has he been waiting this whole time for her to finally leave?

Will he find her mother and brother? Track them down to tell her that she’s missing, that she’s probably dead? Or will the two of them go on forever, watching the door and waiting for her to stop by? And what of her friends? Gunny and Jack, Missy and Elliot, they’ll miss her for sure. Will Andrew find them and tell them that she’ll never show for a monthly poker game again? Will they cry, will she be mourned, or will she fade from their lives as easily as she stepped into them?

Maybe she can make it so no one has to miss her. She still doesn’t know why they dragged out putting her in the ground, but she’s certainly not going to just roll over and let them get away with it. And if she can get free, then no one has to worry for her. Quickly she sits up, grinding her wrists together to try and get the rope around them to loosen up.

“Heh, guess who’s waking up over here?”

It doesn’t work, the knots are good, tight and rough, so she goes to run. Just as she’s rising up a hand clamps down on her shoulder and keeps her kneeling. When she looks up there’s three men right in front of her. Two great Khans and a man in a checkered suit. It’s clear by his relaxed position that he’s in charge and she watches, annoyed, as he puffs on a cigarette. She’s about to die, and he’s getting a nicotine fix?

Then he flicks it aside, crushing it under one nearly pristine shoe. “Time to cash out.” Oh, god, casino talk.

“Will you get it over with?” The Khan on the left looks annoyed, but checkered suit holds up a finger to silence him.

“Maybe Khans kill people without lookin’ ‘em in the face, but I ain’t a Fink. You dig?” Well, shit, that confirms what she already knew: they mean to kill her. It also tells her that this man isn’t a Khan, not that that wasn’t blindingly obvious by the everything about him, but still- it means whoever she pissed off probably isn’t with them either.

He pulls out a poker chip, it’s shiny, definitely different than any one she’s ever seen before. It has to be the platinum chip that was in her package, the one she was supposed to deliver. At least now she knows it was about her job, nothing personal.

“You’ve made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.” What scene? There was nothing to get twisted up in. She’s just a courier, doesn’t owe anyone money, never ran with a group that made enemies, has never even been on the Strip before. It’s all about who hired her, they’re the ones that should be tied up, kneeling in the dirt. She’s a good person, has friends and family that care about her, there’s no reason for her to be here, on her knees, not even given the chance to say goodbye.

He pulls out a pistol. She knows she should be scared, but the emotion seems far away. All she can get her hands around is annoyance and confusion. 

“From where you’re kneeling must seem like an 18 karat run of bad luck.” God who is this guy? All the poker puns and shit? They live in New Vegas, but doesn’t he have any sort of original thought- or has he really bought into all the hype? He aims the gun at her face, and when she looks up at him, she sees it in his eyes that he’s serious, there’s something there she reads that tells her nothing she can say or do will change her fate.

She’s going to die.

“Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.”

Her last thought is: what an asshole.

[pokemonruby]

What's your top ten favorite Fire Emblem characters of all time? I was gonna ask 5 but then I thought maybe that would be too mean....

i’ve only played the most recent titles, as i got into the franchise around the time awakening was released (as have a majority of the fans... i simply did not know what fire emblem was prior to robin and lucina’s inclusions in smash) so most of my faves will hail from them! with the exception of a few sacred stones and path of radiance/radiant dawn characters. 

dimitri... i had a feeling i would like him as a character from the moment of his introduction, but wow, i never expected that he would turn out to be one of the franchise’s most well-written, complex, and overall intriguing characters... which is surprising when you consider that the writing in fire emblem games isn’t ordinarily that... good. but they did a pretty good job in three houses... not echoes-level amazing, but still better than awakening or fates fjfkdksdjskdj and with dimitri and his route, in particular, they really hit it out of the ballpark. also he’s just... a very sweet guy in general. i love him with all of my heart. 

HENRY... i’ve romanced him at least 5 times in awakening and i just. i love him so much. you do not understand. i would die for henry fire emblem without hesitation. his character is so unique and i love his design and cute little quirks and i just LOVE HIM. they will never write a more iconic character for the series than henry. oh but he’s tied with yuri from three houses because he’s the personification of >:3c 

chrom... he is a massive dork but also my type in every single way. i needn’t say more. 

ike + soren... Do Not Separate Them 

hilda! hilda! hilda! 

leon from fire emblem: echoes... a very underrated character, unfortunately, but they wrote him so well it makes me wonder how he’s even a character in a fire emblem game of all things.

and then lyon from fire emblem: sacred stones... i haven’t gotten around to actually playing this game yet, but i know enough about it for lyon to be my favorite antagonist in the series... besides berkut. i really really adore his character overall, especially since he reminds me of my oc matthew ;_; 

i hate fates with all of my being but shigure acts like my oc jevon so i naturally have to love him, i’m sorry, i sorely wish i could put him in a different game. but if i ever have a reason to revisit fates in the future (very unlikely, but hypothetically speaking), it will only be for him and his mom because i really like her too. 

olivia!! i got really attached to her in my most recent playthrough of awakening... she’s precious. also her supports with henry are some of my favorite in the whole series.

and last but certainly not least: owain. i don’t think i need to elaborate further on why he’s one of my favorites (it’s mainly due to the fact that he reminds me of my boyfriend dkjdksjdksdj)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Episode 4: Take Us Back except I’M DEAD INSIDE [Despair Route]

Episode 4: Take Us Back I’M DEAD INSIDE [Despair Route]

..............No.

Just

No.

To everything. 

I’m still fuming after episode 3. 

Where the fuck did James go, anyway? Did he fly off the boat? 

Welp, the big Lilly scene. Let’s see what all the hype is about.

oh okay

I’ll just forget about the fact that you kidnapped my boyfriend and friends after murdering my best friend Mitch, then proceeded to cut out my boyfriend's tongue, cut off Violet’s finger, then murdered James. 

Let bygones be bygones.

No Lilly

You ARE evil.

What you did was evil. And if I weren’t on the despair route, I would’ve shot you in your lying fucking ratass face. 

AAAAAAAND it’s over. 

I’m am so happy that letting James die amounted to a two-second conversation with Lilly. So. Worth. It. 

Oh wait

NO IT’S FUCKING NOT

ARE YOU JOKING

DO YOU THINK ME A FOOL??

I knew it was bad. I knew letting Lilly live didn’t mean shit. Now she gets to flow down the river and live the rest of her life doing who the fuck knows. 

Hell, I bet she DOES run into David and live a happy little life with all her livid children.

Because at this point, why not.

What I said: “I hope you find peace, Lilly.”

What I meant: “I HOPE YOU CATCH ON FIRE AND BURN TO DEATH BUT THE DAMAGE DOESN’T REACH YOUR BRAIN SO YOU STILL TURN INTO A WALKER AND LIVE THE REST OF ETERNITY STUCK BETWEEN A HELL OF LIFE AND DEATH.”

BITCH

I fucking askdjaksjdalksjdlkajsdlkaaaaaaaaaaa-

The opening credits haven’t even opened and I’m already this pissed off. 

I know it probably wasn’t in the budget or they didn’t have time to give us something substantial with letting Lilly live but fucking hell. If I have to sacrifice James, at least let me have a real final battle with Lilly. Let me have the option to bash her head in with a saltlick. Give me something! 

AAAAAAAAHHDHDJLKSJLKJSLKSJSLK

......

Louis just..... makes me want to cry.

I’m serious, I have never felt so awful looking at Louis and knowing what I did to him. 

The number of pictures of Louis smiling and being cute that I’m going to have to look at to cope with this nonsense jfc.....

...

....Really.

That’s it, Vi?

“Lou...”

That’s ALL you have to say.

I

You

Not even a hug. Nothing. Nope, we gotta talk about Minerva some more because clearly, she’s so much more important.

 Fuck Minerva, Violet!

 Again, if she were fully in character, she would’ve hugged Louis and not given a shit about Minerva. 

AND YOU’RE STILL CONCERNED ABOUT HER

“What the fuck is she doing? She’s going to get herself killed!”

VIOLET

THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY TIMES I CAN SCREAM AT YOU TO FORGET ABOUT MINERVA

oh huh

Louis is still the one to fall over in the cart

Don’t know why I find that interesting but I do?

Aw fuck

I don’t get to see him again until the ending. 

Well that’s just.... depressing. 

Have I mentioned how much I hate this route?

wtf has Tenn’s voice always been this deep? Why am I just noticing this now?

Thanks. I hate it. 

Okay. Okay okay okay. 

I will give it this. 

I like the scene with Clementine and AJ. With James dead, and with the choices I’ve made up to this point, it has a way more serious, almost quiet tone to it. With James, it’s all anger and panic when he tries to take AJ away, but here...... I don’t know. With James I’ve gotten to the point where the cave scene is so wild that I can do nothing but laugh all “Yeah, yeah, James, calm your shit and quit pacing, you look foolish.”

But here.... This choice:

Is suddenly more heartbreaking now that I have to basically ruin AJ’s confidence in himself after he opened up to Clem in a way he never has before. In my eyes, this is just.... such a negative impact on their relationship. I mean, I get it. No one wants AJ to be a killer, or to like killing or whatever but.... still. 

And, on top of that, this choice cements Violet’s fate and I hate that. 

This whole route fucks Violet over in every way possible. Not only do I romance Louis and spend all my time with him, but the only reason I saved her was so that Louis won’t die in the end. Then, I let Ey Yo cut her finger off, she went through all that stupid nonsense with Minerva, and how she’s going to die to save Tenn’s life. 

Fuck everything about this. 

The being said... I fucking miss Louis. 

“I like Aasim.” 

Hahahahaha okay, the way AJ said that made me laugh.

Hi Violet........... 

Also, funny how Tenn also runs up to hug Violet but he doesn’t do that with Louis. I know he and Violet are way closer, so it makes sense, but with Louis he’s just “Oh it’s just Louis.... Guess I’ll join in the hug, too.” Hahaha 

What’s less funny is how Violet doesn’t say shit about Louis. 

Louis at least mentions that Violet’s eyes aren’t infected but Violet’s just got.... nothing. I want to know how he’s doing. Ugh. 

I don’t blame Violet for this, I blame the writing. Because AGAIN. If she were kept in character, she would’ve mentioned him. 

Hell, CLEMENTINE should’ve asked because, y’know, he’s kind of her boyfriend??? 

But what do I know. 

I don’t know nothin’ about these characters. 

God, I miss Louis. 

Well, at least Violet knows she was an idiot about Minerva. 

PFFFFTT-

“Welcome to Happy Sunshine Land! Here’s Mayor Violet!”

“NO I HATE IT”

Oh Vi...... managing to make me laugh seconds before chaos erupts...

Oh fuck

oh fuck

oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck

nope

nope 

nope nope nope nope

....

....

....

That

I fucking loathe that. 

Seeing and hearing it.

I had to take a break and come back to this. I’m sorry, but that is just so wrong. It’s wrong! I love you Tenn, and damn it, you’re ending better blow my fucking mind after having to sacrifice Violet to see it but.... No. 

Violet shouldn’t be the one who died on the bridge. 

It’s not even a long scene, but it fucking feels like it is. 

They rip Violet apart and going back to look at it, she’s still fighting them as she falls and they just cover her. 

Fuck Minerva. 

I have nothing for her. 

I hope in whatever afterlife there is, Violet kicks her ass all the way down to the fiery pits of hell. 

And Clementine just..... Sad face for two seconds and then we’re off. 

We don’t even really mourn her. We mourn Tenn for a moment when AJ’s shoots him, but Violet’s dead and Tenn’s in shock and AJ slaps him, says Violet died for him, and they go.

I fucking-

ugh

UGH

And Clem’s bit

I hate everything

However, one thing that I DON’T hate is playing as AJ. I LOVE playing as AJ during the barn scene. 

I had to take another break after the flashback scene. I still can’t believe I’ve watched both of those Clementine and AJ scenes over a hundred times and it still manages to make me tear up every time I go back to play. 

Now that I’ve calmed down a bit, let’s see what this ending has to offer. 

CROSS THAT HEART SHIT OUT

Violet deserved so much more than Minerva. 

...Wait.

Tenn never made it back to the school?

Okay, I get it. So, basically, he was ashamed after what happened and went back to find Violet and Minerva. I like how he realizes how “naive” he’s been throughout this whole thing and that he doesn’t want to be the reason someone dies again, that he wants AJ to teach him everything he knows. Which, in my personal opinion, is the right answer. Telling him to keep being an artist without learning from his mistakes, without teaching him better and smarter ways of survival just lets Violet die in vain. 

I’m also thankful that they didn’t make me see Violet as a walker. I mean, fuck everything about her death but... I would’ve flipped my shit again if I had to see that. 

RUBY

Oh Take Us Back..... why ya tryin’ to make me cry again....

Ruby and Aasim are holding hands and the small bit of hope makes me feel a little bit better. 

LOOK AT HIM

My beautiful boy........

I am never ever doing another playthrough without romancing and saving Louis ever again.

Even now that we’re into the “happy” ending, it still feels wrong. 

Still annoyed that nothing is said about Violet. 

Nothing. 

“It’s been a week tho they’ve already mourned her blah blah blah” I don’t fucking care.

Louis....

Louis places the note on the table so gently.....

Okay. The clouis scene is cute. It’s really cute. But it doesn’t make up for all the shit I had to do to get it myself. 

BUT... I won’t get into too much because I’ve made posts about this, but I don’t like how happy and neatly wrapped up everything’s portrayed as. I want a real reaction out of Louis- who, btw has now lost two of his best friends, has been shot, was kidnapped, was traumatized after having his tongue cut out, who will never talk again and will never sing again, and saw his girlfriend come back to the school without her leg after being bitten and on the brink of death, and thought Tenn was dead on top of all that- rather than............... happy. 

I still love the scene, but if you asked me when this takes place without any context, I would’ve told you a year at the least. 

...

I’m not gonna lie: I’m a fucking mess. 

I don’t know if I can say that I hate this ending, because really, it’s the same ending with a few changes. 

But I hate that Violet is dead. I hate what happened to Louis. I hate that I had to sacrifice Violet [and in a way Louis] in order for Tenn to live. I hate that James is dead. I FUCKING HATE THAT LILLY IS ALIVE OUT THERE. 

In conclusion: FUCK ALMOST EVERYTHING ABOUT THE DESPAIR ROUTE

The Good: I got to see scenes and interactions I never have before. It was cool hanging out with Violet for once. She made me laugh a couple times. Tenn’s ending is good. The cute clouis scene with the note is sweet.

The Bad: Literally everything else. Fuck letting Louis get captured, fuck letting Lilly live, fuck letting James and Violet die. Fuck not trusting AJ and adding damage to the relationship between him and Clementine. FUCK THE BOAT SCENE OF VIOLET CARING MORE FOR MINERVA THAN LOUIS. FUCK NOT GETTING TO SMOOCH AND SEE MY BOY’S FACE. FUCK LILLY, FUCK MINERVA, FUCK THIS ROUTE.

Again, I... don’t have any real words for the feelings this route brought me. 

Just.... mad. 

I’m mad. And sad. And dead.

I just need a minute to stop being dead inside.

I’m gonna need to read so much fluff after this jfc....