xinimartsy

[xinimartsy]

[xinimartsy]

He is a perfect little jiggly friend and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees.

[xinimartsy]

Saw a post like this with negative outlook so I asked for it to be fixed

[xinimartsy]

#Merry crisis

[xinimartsy]

[xinimartsy]

Hubby-

He's an attention-seeking little shit. Please excuse him if he gets too clingy with you.

[xinimartsy]

I cANT- THIS MAN IS TOO CUTE, I LOVE HIM!!!

Link is now living on my mind rent free, I love him, I'm in love with him. Vic was my main man but, welp.... Cute gentle giant came and swooped me off my feet I guess. Now I want to wake up to his smile everyday and take morning tea together, and braid his hair whenever he wants.... And then undo the braid and redo it under the pretext I messed up so I could play with his hair longer.

Your mornings would be simple, gentle, and warm

He’d make your tea just the way you liked, a generous pour in a rose petal tea cup. He’d greet you with a kind smile stretched over his face.

As you braid his hair he’d softly hum, a content sigh falls from his smiling lips

“Today and tomorrow and the days that follow, I’m glad I get to be yours”

[xinimartsy]

Imagine an Alternate Universe of Ikemen where all the mums are still alive. Just a harem of moms coddling Belle because they always wanted a girl but they all had sons lmao, it'd be adorably wholesome

[xinimartsy]

MY HUSBAND- Sorry Vic and Avery, I love you to bits but 💘LINK💘

.... I want to braid Link's hair-

“You want to- braid.. my hair?“

He blinks a couple of times, a little stunned by your request. A small smile spreads over his flushing features.

“I don’t mind l-if that’s what you’d like! I’m very flattered!”

He shuffles around the office

“Just let me check to see if I have any hair ties in my desk. I wouldn’t want your efforts to go to waste.”

[xinimartsy]

Yes there are mangas, animes and etc. with strong female MCs but as I said, mobile otome games are specifically targeted towards helpless women. I’m half Japanese, been living here half my life and all of my Japanese friends are like that in terms of personality, they prefer more dominant boyfriends (also why the most popular suitors are those types). They mostly prefer to have a gentle and “pure” image. Ikemen Sengoku might have that MC because of the setting

First of all, hi ❤️ good to see you here again, anon. Second of all, very interesting, I do enjoy hearing your first hand experience with the subject and I do resonate with it. As a Brazilian, someone who can be considered a latina, I'm no stranger to the cultural aspect of it: that our women are fiery and seductive, which.... Fair.

And while I don't deny that many pieces of media, otome games included, might present these characteristics for this reason (I'm looking at you, Shoujo heroines), I don't think it's the case for the subject of our debate: Ikemen Prince and Belle's autonomy in it. And I stand by my opinion that, in this game in particular, it stems from lousy writing.

I don't know how familiar you are with writing, if you partake or take interest in the craft, but there are a few rules to writing a consistent story. The two rules I'll be referring to are Chekhov's Gun and the Consistent Characterization.

"Chekhov's Gun" is a writing principle that says a writer mustn't add anything in that doesn't serve the narrative. If the narrator mentions a gun on the wall in the first act, said gun must be useful in a later act, otherwise it'd have been an useless information which Chekhov describes as "false promises" to the audience.

While Consistent Characterization means that the actions the characters perform throughout the story must be reasonable within their prior characterization. A character can't simply possess a convenient skill that was not priorly foreshadowed, the same you can't ignore something you've established without good reason. A character with no knowledge of street smarts can't suddenly know how to lockpick just because, while if a character had a known past as a thief and was suddenly faced with a lock to pick, you can't simply ignore that they would know how to pick it, instead giving a good explanation as to why in that moment, they weren't able to lockpick this specific door.

Why do I raise these two aspects of writing? Because that's exactly what I complain about Emma in Ikemen prince.

In Ikemen Sengoku's prologue, we get some insight on Mai: she loves fashion and is on her way to her dream job, finally. This little piece of information established that Mai was passionate and driven enough to chase what she wants. Characteristics that remain throughout the game in every route. Mai checks out both Chekhov's Gun, by making use of her skills throughout the narrative, as well as Consistent Characterization, by acting accordingly to how she was established to be in the beginning of the game: driven, passionate, and modern.

Mutsuki (ikemen vampire) and Alice (ikemen revolution) are other two main characters from cybird that, despite being very much the pure, gentle and innocent archetype and mostly lacking agency, they work because they act accordingly to how they were established to be: Mutsuki a simple woman with a love for writing and Alice a cheerful and friendly patisserie who's content with life. They both are thrown headfirst in situations in which they find themselves helpless, much like Mai, but while Mai faces it headfirst like the headstrong girl she is, Mitsuki and Alice are more mellow, which doesn't make them bad characters since that's how they've been made to be.

And that's exactly the problem with Emma. The prologue tells us that Emma is optimistic towards the world, has a strong sense of justice, as well as courage to do what she thinks is right. Though Chevalier is known as the "Brutal Beast" and strikes fear in the hearts of people due to his ruthlessness, Emma still jumped in and slapped the drunk man to make sure the prince wouldn't cut him down, even though she likely knew that his sword could just as easily have turned towards her. She wasn't so innocent as not to know that prince Chevalier WOULD cut the man down, and that's why she stepped in. And although it was said for giggles, Sariel did comment on Emma's slap when explaining his reasoning towards his choice for Belle. This prologue tells us Emma has a most fiery personality and won't hesitate to do something she judges correct, regardless of the possible consequences.

However, many routes strip her of the qualities given to her by the writers themselves, which makes Emma fail in both Consistent Characterization and Chekhov's Gun, seeing as she's both not acting accordingly to her previously established traits as well not using her previously established skills to advance or assist the plot.

That happens because they change Emma's personality depending on her suitor as to enhance him, which is why it's most noticeable in the suitors considered more "dominant" (really the most popular ones), because instead of doing the hard and difficult work of writing someone dominant and astounding enough for someone as fiery but kind as Emma to rely on and fall for, they do what? They make her act uncharacteristically in order to emphasize those traits on him, much too pure to enphisize how they're tainted or much too kind to enphisize their darker side, much too innocent to enphisize how they're mature/dominant, much too clueless to enphisize how they're smart, that's why sometimes it seems that the Emma we read in the prologue and the Emma we read within a route are completely different characters.

That's what bothers me, not her passiveness in itself, but the fact that it seems misplaced in someone like Emma given how she was originally characterized. Emma should not be a character only reacting to what the other characters do to her. Within the world of the game, she's a PERSON. Her experiences and personality should not fluctuate depending on the suitor she's pursuing.

And given that she was priorly written as a more fiery gal, we can somewhat discard the excuse of "cultural difference" because Cybird themselves wrote the prologue and cybird themselves gave Emma those characteristics. They're just failing at upholding it.

Thus.... Lousy writing

[xinimartsy]

YESS! YOU GET IT 😭 THOSE ARE EXACTLY MY THOUGHTS, WORD BY WORD

I hate Belle's naivety and innocence, truly. This whole shtick is such bullshit. There's being optimistic and having a bright positive outlook of life, and then there's just being straight up DUMB. I swear, sometimes it's like there's not a single thought going on in her mind, head completely empty. That angers me so damn much. Give this woman the minimum of agency, let her do something, ANYTHING other than giving boring ass speeches about the good inside and how she believes in them to give her love interest the power up of love or whatever.

Let her learn how to wield a sword! Let her use her feminine wiles to help her man! Let her be book smart and have a lot of useful knowledge about different topics! Let her be so charismatic that she charms everyone she meets and uses it to their advantage!

Let her be a character! Let her move the story forward on her own, and not just as the object to break the love interest's inertia!

[xinimartsy]

It’s a mobile game made for the Japanese audience not foreigners. They will never make Belle or any of their MCs change and be strong. It is different with Switch games where MCs might be that way. You should look for games made by Americans or something because it will never change, it is just a cultural difference

Oh, I know, anon. While I do complain about little things that make me feel iffy, I greatly enjoy the games and believe me, I do not expect astounding writing from a mobile game. The game is harmless fun and so are my critics towards it.

Though I do disagree on the front that it's a cultural difference and more of a general genre thing, because there are plenty of ocidental visual novels in which MC falls in the same damsel in distress category, while we can see from anime, manga and dramas that Japan is no stranger to strong female characters.

Mai herself, from Cybird's Ikemen Sengoku, for example, she insisted in working on her craft and making her own money despite Nobunaga guaranteeing her easygoing life, in most routes she picked up some skill from her suitor, she learned medicine from Ieyasu in several routes, learned how to ride a horse, learned negotiation in Mitsuhide's route, she even rode a horse into the battlefield to butt heads with an unhinged Kenshin in one of his routes. Yes, she had to be saved several times, but they never made her look inappropriately clueless (there were things that were logical that she didn't know and things that she knew, like everyone else), she never paled in comparison to her suitors and was always witty within her own capabilities. She never had to master the blade or become stronger or smarter than the warlords to be strong, she brought her own qualities to the negotiation table, and at least I hardly ever felt helpless or like the MC was unbearable while playing, actually, she's my favorite specially cus of her snark hehe

Emma is not all bad, tho, I think it very much depends on the route. In Clavis' route, I particularly find Emma delightful, because since they want to portrait Clavis as being, well, eccentric, they gave his Emma a more grounded personality to contrast his, while making her brave and adventurous enough to keep up with Clavis' bullshit. They exaggerated aspects from the character to emphasize the other, which in this case works, Clavis' weirdness vs Emma's common sense and their willingness to meet halfway through for each other.

But that same tool doesn't work in routes such as Jin and Chev. In Jin's route they wanted to emphasize his maturity as an older man who fooled around a lot, so they made Emma uncharacteristically innocent and almost childish. And in Chev's, they spent half of the word count telling us that Chevalier was a genius instead of showing us, and whenever they did show it, that was done by dumbing everyone, SPECIALLY Emma, down as to emphasize his geniality, making characters uncharacteristically dumb, not understanding basic concepts that they should very much understand, only so Chevalier could basically spell it out for them, call us "fools" and have everyone in game in awe of his geniality while us as the player feel unsatisfied cus, duh, that was the logical answer, are all these characters really THIS dumb?

Therefore, rather than "cultural differences", I think what we're seeing here is just.... Well, lousy writing.

[xinimartsy]

Biggest bullshit in this game. I haven't seen a single route this chick was ever impartial

[xinimartsy]

I hate Belle's naivety and innocence, truly. This whole shtick is such bullshit. There's being optimistic and having a bright positive outlook of life, and then there's just being straight up DUMB. I swear, sometimes it's like there's not a single thought going on in her mind, head completely empty. That angers me so damn much. Give this woman the minimum of agency, let her do something, ANYTHING other than giving boring ass speeches about the good inside and how she believes in them to give her love interest the power up of love or whatever.

Let her learn how to wield a sword! Let her use her feminine wiles to help her man! Let her be book smart and have a lot of useful knowledge about different topics! Let her be so charismatic that she charms everyone she meets and uses it to their advantage!

Let her be a character! Let her move the story forward on her own, and not just as the object to break the love interest's inertia!

[xinimartsy]

What in Hell is Bad? is Obey Me on aphrodisiacs steroids.

It's the horny hentai fever dream they envisioned before toning it all the way down to make Obey Me. And it's such a wild ride, god I'm loving every damn second. 100% unhinged, completely out there.

[xinimartsy]

Once again expressing my discontentment with Leon's route on Ikepri, at least the first season, cus how can they make him so unbearably charming and captivating in EVERY SINGLE ROUTE but his OWN???

Sorry Leon lovers but his route is just so. damn. BORING!!! He's one of my favorite designs, I LOOVE his expressions, specially that handsome smirk of his but ughhhh his route is so blaaaaaandddddddddddd. No sauce, no spice. You can't TELL me he's charming and awesome and rebellious and mischievous, Cybird. You have to SHOW me him being charming and awesome and rebellious and mischievous! Which I kNOW it's no problem for you because you make him being absolutely delightful in every single other route.

[xinimartsy]

Ok so this started as a crackship but hear me out....

Keith x Gilbert

(romantic OR platonic).

Look, my knowledge of Gil is as small as an ant to say the LEAST, but I do know he's not a heartless monster and he's kind and fluffy deep down, and that he's attracted to MC by her gentleness and kindness, as well as the fact that she is WILLING to look past all his war crimes and be all buddy buddy with him.

MEANWHILE, Keith is a very gentle and very kind person with a big secret (his other personality) which makes him afraid people will think he's genuinely (and clinically) insane. Both him and his other personality are attracted to MC for her optimism and her willingness to accept both of them, something they never received from anyone BUT Gilbert, who CANONICALLY knows Keith is actually two different people in one body and seems to have no problems with it, however he's in a grey political relationship with Keith since he's the prince from a hostile nation that may or may not use that information against Keith and Jade if he wakes up in a bad mood. And, considering that Gilbert loves people and wished for a better future, we can consider him a frustrated optimist.

Thus, Keith checks out all the criteria for attracting Gil and vice versa.

SO, theoretically speaking, if we put them both in a more favorable scenario in which Gilbert's nation is not trying to gobble Jade, Gil would 100% accept both Keiths which would make them both genuinely treasure Gil, who would be enthralled by the prospect of a genuine friendship thus using all his notorious infamous reputation to protect Keith from slander and murder attempts as well as use his crazy good intel team to help him gather information against Uncle Dearest™ which in turn would make Keith more relaxed, less stressed, less scared, and generally happier.

Giving that Keith has an interest for medicine, he'd try his best to help Gil with his health which would give Gil a more comfortable life and future, while Wicked/Alter Keith would always be quick to action whenever bold and decisive moves are needed in order to protect Gil whenever his health deteriorates as well as not be afraid to just tell him to go rest and stop saying useless edgy stuff.

In summary: The perfect pair (or trio, depending how you see it)

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