lovelyminako

[lovelyminako]

A giant rant/critique about redeemable Villain LIs in otomes/dating VNs

Before I get into the rant, let me say a few disclaimers/notes. Tropes are tools. Just because a dating game or VN has a redeemable villain LI doesn't automatically mean it makes it bad. It does not and I will argue against that if you think that's the case (likewise if you think a game having a redeemable Villain LI automatically makes it good). There have been cases of certain tropes that work well in a certain story because of the execution and how it goes, including this one. Tropes very much rely on how you use them which impacts the story. This is just discussing times when it has been used badly and turns a VN that could've been great or memorable into something that's just okay.

With that out of the way, let's get onto the rant.

For those who don't know me, I play Genius Inc otome games. Their games aren't really consistent in quality, some are better or worse because they hire different writers for different stories. So for context, a lot of my criticism is aimed at them but can still apply to other VNs and otomes as well.

(Also, I know there are the female LI games from Genius Inc, I know they exist, never played them so idk if they follow this rule and it's only the men-likers that follow this.)

I was just reading Amon's side story from Lullaby of Demonia and it really just reminded me of why I have a love-hate relationship with Genius Inc and their games. They have a crippling amount of villain LIs that don't tend to be written well which can boil down to 2 main problems.

They make the MCs stupidly empathic for no reason.

Empathy can be a strength of one's character sometimes. A big example I can name is Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket and I find her to be actually good. But man, I find myself just shouting at the screen for the MC endangering themselves by trying to touch the villain LI's heart when their instincts should be to run or fight back. A lot of the poor examples of a villain LI romance have the MC just risk their own safety and ignore any sense of self-preservation for no reason other than the possibility of trying to redeem the villain LI and even more infuriating if the villain LI is a genocidal maniac and/or desperately wishes the MC to suffer or die.

I get that there's the ideal of "there's good in everyone" but sometimes, you need to draw the line or get me to care about why they care. Suppose you have this villain LI who has killed thousands of people and committed war crimes but has emotional trauma. In that case, I'm more likely to pity them but still hold them accountable for their actions because a sad story doesn't justify doing bad things. I don't support the MC trying to redeem them of all the horrible shit they did because as far as I'm concerned, they're a complete monster.

And a lot of the time with these monstrous types of villain LIs, the MC has no reason to care to redeem villain LIs, they just simply do because of their wildly empathetic heart and don't care what they have done to others or themselves which seems less empathetic and more childishly naive. If these VNs just gave the MC a reason to care for the villain LI strongly and want them to be a better person aside from them just being hot and let me see why they want to, I could still at least understand them. But they just don't. A lot of the time, these villain LIs are strangers and I just can't see why they'd get so worked up over them, especially since there tend to be other guys they can get but choose this one for no apparent reason.

Like imagine a scenario where there's a villain LI who has done horrible stuff and the MC wants them to be redeemed and be a good person. But the twist is they used to be friends or something more, hell maybe the MC even played a part in the reason why the villain LI is the way they are. The MC desperately wants them to be the person they used to know and wishes to share those moments of joy and fun again and keeps endangering themselves for that small hope they can touch their old friend's heart again and regain the person they loved.

Or perhaps the MC was in the exact same shoes as the villain LI and they used to be a villain as well. They laid waste to many villages and cities, killing dozens because of their own trauma/grief/backstory reasons. But there was someone who decided to lend out a hand to them and try to heal them and convince them that they could be a better person. And it succeeded. They let go of their villainy and atone for their mistakes, fixing up the villages they destroyed, providing support for the loved ones of those they killed, etc. Years later, they're now the hero of the story and are finally confronted with a villain who also has been burnt and is lashing against the world for it. And all they can see is themselves. So they try to use kind words and thoughtful gestures to help guide them onto the path they are now on and show them the light in an attempt to give them the chance they had, even as others discourage them and say they should just imprison or kill the villain.

Now I might not exactly agree with their actions in each scenario but I would understand them and that's all I need. "If your protagonist wants something no one else cares about, you gotta give us some emotional explanation as to why, otherwise, it just seems random." - There Will Be Fudd

2. The villain has a weak reason to be sympathetic.

Too many times, I've seen villains have such a weak reason for them to be considered redeemable or in other words, their actions far outweigh their reasons.

A prime example I can name is Sakuya from Soul of Yokai. While in the first season, it had always been implied he had a sad story behind him. However, a beauty about the implications and small pieces that told you he had a sympathetic backstory behind him without getting into the nitty gritty details was that the audience could fill in the blank. The audience could see he was a genocidal maniac who wishes all humans would die (for context, he's not a human), see small bits of pieces of "One day, Sakuya suddenly changed from being a loving person to a ruthless murderer," "This gift [an injured eye] was from a human, just like you," "You're not fooling anyone with that nice human act," and "You sound like her... before..." and immediately understand that a human girl met him (without anyone else knowing), he fell in love with her before she betrayed him and the act was so vile that he decided the rest of humanity should burn down alongside with her. That's all we needed to know and knowing exactly what happened would only just cheapen the entire thing because the audience could imagine for themselves what was so horrible that it completely changed Sakuya and he wouldn't dare speak about it because it was that horrific. Then we get to Season 2 just to discover that what happened was that the girl in question just cheated on him and suddenly what turned from a beautiful and alluring mystery to suddenly wondering why Sakuya simply just hated only the girl or just abandoned his love for humans without killing them. Sure, a lot of people cheat on their lovers but that's not an action that deserves death.

While this is a very specific case, my point is that because of Sakuya's actions of attempting genocide, simply not telling what happened to him was more effective than knowing he got cheated on because of the "Noodle Incident"-esque nature of Sakuya's backstory simply revealed that a horrific event happened to Sakuya which left him traumatised in which humans were the cause of the event which made him become a genocidal murderer. With actions as severe as his, you're expecting an equally severe incident that would justify or explain what he's doing. And in a case where your villain (LI) is committing literal war crimes, it's possible you can't even come up with a reason that explains what he's doing and you're better off just leaving hints at a sad story without fully knowing what that sad story is. Even if Sakuya's backstory ended up being something stronger, it wouldn't have worked as much because it's likely that whatever the writer made wasn't going to be as horrific as the audience imagined.

And to bring it to a more general level, a villain LI needs a reason that is equal to their villainy to convince you that they're redeemable. If your supposed redeemable villain has done evil but nothing horrific, then they can get a milder sympathetic story to equal to what they have done because it's equal although you can do something more extreme and it wouldn't bring down their redeemability. Have a more monstrous villain LI, you'll need a stronger reason for why they are the way they are or doing a Sakuya and keeping the backstory vague, depending on which angle works best for your story.

If your villain has an insufficient reason for being sympathetic, I find that worse than them just being evil for no reason because I can at least get behind that. Attempting to make them sympathetic just makes me roll my eyes that you're trying to make them feel for them rather than committing to them just being evil. And trying to make them sympathetic solely to date them just makes it feel forced and unnatural which is one of the types of writing you should never strive for.

#otome games #otome game #otome #visual novel #dating sim #vn #genius inc

[lovelyminako]

Nevermind...

BABE WAKE UP BYUNG OR HAN IS GOING INTO THE MIST!!!

[lovelyminako]

I'm watching Amon's side story in Lullaby of Demonia and why tf is the MC just sucking ass rn. Like "I wonder if he can still get redeemed?" Girl, he literally SAed you. Not to mention, he killed thousands of other innocent people, including his dad.

And look, I know Lucifer is far from being the best father as they discussed a tad bit of Lucifer's favouritism with Alastor because he was spurred out of Lucifer's one and true love, Rosaria, and the rest of his wives are just ignored. But like, the rest of his brothers turned out fine despite having gone through the same conditions (relatively, Valec did still bad shit but did turn away from it and Ifrit just constantly slept with succubi and drank all day before meeting MC). I doubt it's solely Luci's fault and Amon's personality is still bad, especially considering the other brothers still find him killing Luci just straight-up revolting and they still respect their dad. I think Lucifer would've just had favouritism and negligence (more or less) to any child who wasn't Alastor which I doubt is enough to do what Amon did.

Your other brothers went through the same shit you did, stop trying to pin the blame on your father for your bad behaviour when you could've used your brothers to actually console each other and have a group that completely understands your situation and use that as a support group. You're literally the third-born, you definitely had Malthus to talk to.

"I don't need another speech by some impotent whack job whose mother didn't love him, rationalizing why he needs to conquer the universe!" — Peter Quill/Star-Lord

#lullaby of demonia #amon lullaby of demonia #genius inc #otome game #otome games #otomania #otome

[lovelyminako]

Ngl, I thought the falling stars lyric was a reference to how Round 3 has the motif of falling stars (the shots of falling stars in Ivan's eyes, falling stars in the background on the stage Ivan is singing on, the meteor shower scene and how falling stars are just meteorites, when child Till is standing up against the alien and falling stars flash as he does, etc.).

not actually a theme I think but I find it interesting how in the lyrics of CURE Till talks about crying(?) but uses stars instead of tears,

and one of Ivan's lines when he starts singing is "carve scars beneath my eyes"

which is a way of saying that even if Till made him cry so much that he literally got hurt from it, that he'd continue suffering through it for Till....like...which is kinda star tear disease coded? Oh and the fact that they're both pining over people who don't want them....and that they're willingly blind to the fact because they do not want to let go of that person...goodbye.

#alien stage till #alien stage #alnst #alien stage ivan

[lovelyminako]

everyone's doomed

also on youtube

#the transitions??? they're so good #alien stage

[lovelyminako]

BABE WAKE UP BYUNG OR HAN IS GOING INTO THE MIST!!!

#daybreak roblox #roblox daybreak #YESSSSS YES YES YES #OMG OMG OHHHH MAAAAAA GOOOOOOODDDDD #NONE OF YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I WANT THEM IN #I SO DO NOT REGRET BUYING A $25 DOLLAR GIFTCARD FOR ROBUX MY MONEY WILL BE USED WELL #I CAN'T BELIEVE MY DREAMS COME TRUE #YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS #AM I DREAMING RIGHT NOW #EDWHEBHWFBHWEFBWEKBFWEF #I CAN DIE HAPPY ONCE I'VE BOUGHT THE SKIN #BRENDA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH GIRL #<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 #AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF LONGING FOR THEM NOW I HAVE THEM #YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS #THANK GOD FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY #ok i'm fine now #can't wait for the new update #we get stareater and goodbye stage skins both for ye-jun and either byung or han

[lovelyminako]

Yeah fr, I watched girlie's Suki Suki Daisuki video constantly and ventured their other vids before Alien Stage ever dropped.

Once I did get into Alien Stage, I didn't realise they were the one who made the series because I never would've imagined a animator YouTuber would've made a series that popular with their own custom songs. But honestly I'm glad for her. CG Vivi.

I keep seeing people saying vivinos was “obscure” before the newest alien stage video. like am I crazy her vids are extremely popular and always have been. literally all of her full length videos have over 1 million views each, how is this obscure at all? the extremely short onigiri dance video alone has over 6 million. most independent animators and directors would kill to be “passed over” like this.

#vivinos #alien stage #pink bitch club

[lovelyminako]

the holy trinity

[lovelyminako]

I'm sorry I'm not kept up with the fellow users of Tumblr but WHAT IS IVANTILL

Can my followers pls tell me?

[lovelyminako]

what do you do when you find a cute boy? you make him worse!

made some milo fanart from the raise your own yandere game by @perfectlovevn

go play the game here!

#perfectlovevn #yandere vn #perfect love #milo change #perfect love milo #perfect love vn

[lovelyminako]

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVEN'T YET!

I usually don't like Yandere VNs unless I want to play a horror game (because I have a strong belief in a free, healthy, "if you love them then let them go" love so playing a Yandere VN makes me feel more scared since the yandere tend to be the LIs and technically the LI is one here but it's more nuanced than that). But my god does this game just execute the trope perfectly in a very niche way.

One of my biggest gripes about Yandere VNs is how the MC (and the game itself) always romanticises the actions of the Yandere which always creates personal dissonance. But here, it's a tool that only elevates the storytelling. Eris is not a good person and the narrative makes this clear and you're meant to feel uneasy about how they manipulate Milo to change into what they want him to be.

And my god it personally hurt for me to see Milo change who he was for Eris and see Eris as his world because those changes did benefit him at the expense of losing his morality and sanity. Seeing how Eris just changing him into someone worse was more horror-inducing than any jumpscare I've experienced, especially because I liked shy and meek Milo from the get-go.

I don't wanna spoil too much but please just take the time to complete this game. It's completely worth the time and money (if you wish).

Ready to Meet Milo?

Game is now uploaded. Go nuts! Let me know if there are any bugs.

Here is the walkthrough if you need it.

#perfectlovevn #yandere #yandere vn #male yandere #milo change #perfect love vn #perfect love milo

[lovelyminako]

My hc / interpretation of the 4l LIs… ^_^

Individual images (w/o filters)

#Not me deadass seeing the bottom left one and immediately thinking that was Ye-jun #I'M NOT WRONG RIGHT

[lovelyminako]

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

They are all 3 sentences long

Perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation

Like absolutely flawless English teacher-style writing with only a single exclamation mark, ever

No mentions whatsoever of character names, settings, situations, or anything that could be tied to the story

The usernames may be identical to people who exist on ao3, but the name is not clickable, and no profile is associated with it EXCEPT when you directly search for that name. What this means: the comments come from an unregistered (not logged in) reader, bots scrape the site for real usernames, attach that to the comment, and post

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

[lovelyminako]

I submitted my demo to the yandere game jams!

This has been super fun to work on. Actually putting your work out there is a little nerve wracking lol, but I hope to improve a lot as I keep enjoying this new hobby! Thank you again to anyone who’s taken an interest in my project and sent in cute and fun asks, it’s meant a lot to me. I’m opening my askbox again now that this is out too!

Here’s the link to it

[lovelyminako]

NAH I THOUGHT THIS WAS SOME SORT OF SHITTY YOU SKIN WTF IS THIS

I’m sorry but this new Callum drip is so ass ☠️

HE’S SO UFLY

#roblox daybreak #daybreak roblox

[lovelyminako]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

#for personal use

[lovelyminako]

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

#for personal use