#knows how bad the nonary games are
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To: @caramellum
From: @dcomexperiment
Hello! I loved your prompt of randomising character pairings, so here are a few the generator spat out with how I think they’d start getting on, plus some art I made to accompany the ships!
Akane/Diana:Girlies willing to do what needs to be done. Willing to hurt other people to protect the ones they love, or for their perceived greater good. With this one, I’d imagine they bond in the VLR timeline, when Akane is starting to set up the AB Project with Sigma. She probably would have been sympathetic towards Akane beforehand, when they were living in Dcom together, as she’d recognise and care for another damaged individual.
Mira/Junpei:This match up was so funny to me. Imagine, Junpei being emo boy cranky with Akane prior to the decision game starting, and getting friendly with Mira in Dcom out of spite. Junpei’s talk of alternate timelines and the ways in which people can change on a hair would probably intrigue her and get her curious about the block in her own emotions. In turn, Junpei would probably notice something off about her, yet appreciate talking to someone who views things logically and cynically at that point in time. Fits his questionable taste. Who knows where it could go.And then the game would eventually end and he’d get all his memories back of other timelines.
Dio/Eric:This was the first random roll I made, actually, which was great as I love this as a silly crackship. I can only imagine a reality where the two have both been brought in to be questioned by Crash Keys, meeting and bonding over being used and traumatised by their families, then turned into bad guys because of the situation they were deliberately placed into. They’re both pretty much set up to act terribly to further other people’s goals. So, why not. Eric’s deeply clingy and looking for anyone who’ll show him affection, and Dio seems like the type who would respond well to someone who showers him with praise. Actually - I think this would work out well in an AU where Eric is included in the VLR nonary game as a ‘control group’ participant, as well.
Clover/Carlos:They would end up meeting after ZTD wraps up, in a timeline where Clover is awakened in or returns to the past. SOIS would no doubt want to speak to Carlos, and the two of them would end up bonding over their strong love for their siblings. They could be friends, with each one reminding the other of their sibling.
Alice/Lotus:As soon as the car picks Alice up, these two would start talking. They’re both take-no-shit types, I see them getting on well.
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Zero Escape? I think you'll find I escape plenty
Inspired by this post, I decided to count how many times throughout the series characters actually escape from a situation, including both escape rooms and the Nonary Games as a whole. There's obviously going to have to be some judgement calls about how to count things, so you might not agree with the final number I come up with. Spoilers for the whole Zero Escape series below.
9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
For this, we'll be going off the DS version, counting each route from the start of the game, since that's what Akane actually experienced through Junpei's eyes. The Nonary Game starts with each participant escaping from an individual room, presumably excluding Akane and Aoi. So that's 7 escapes per route. Things then diverge into 2 at the first door. For the second door choice, if Junpei enters door 3, nobody else does an escape room at this or the next stage - we'll say this happens once for Submarine Ending. For the other routes, the group splits into two again, and then one final time for two escape rooms back to back. So.
Knife Ending
Third Class Cabin - 7 escapes
Door 4/5 - 2 escapes
Door 7/8 - 2 escapes
Door 1/6 - 4 escapes
Submarine Ending
Third Class Cabin - 7 escapes
Door 4/5 - 2 escapes
Door 3 - 1 escape
Door 2 - 2 escapes
Axe Ending
Third Class Cabin - 7 escapes
Door 4/5 - 2 escapes
Door 7/8 - 2 escapes
Door 1/6 - 4 escapes
The true routes add a bit more because we also go through Door 9, of course. In the Safe ending, while Junpei doesn't go through an escape room, we can presume Ace and Lotus do, and of course in the True Ending Junpei does go through the Library and Study. The puzzle in the incinerator is also presented with a "Seek a way out!" introduction. For the Coffin Ending, we're assuming that Junpei already knows the code from the Safe Ending and goes straight onto the True Ending without replaying, to get a lowball estimate.
Safe Ending
Third Class Cabin - 7 escapes
Door 4/5- 2 escapes
Door 7/8 - 2 escapes
Door 1/6 - 4 escapes
Door 9 - 2 escapes
True Ending
Third Class Cabin - 7 escapes
Door 4/5 - 2 escapes
Door 7/8 - 2 escapes
Door 1/6 - 4 escapes
Door 9 - 2 escapes
Incinerator - 1 escape
Finally, there's the matter of the escape from the Nonary Game overall, which is achieved both in the True Ending, and an escape from the First Nonary Game 9 years prior. We don't know the details of the puzzles in that game, so we can't accurately count how many escape rooms were escaped within it, so we'll just add 1 for the overall escape.
999 Total: 79
Virtue's Last Reward
VLR has a fundamentally different structure to 999 - the player and Sigma only visit each escape room once each, because they jump around the timeline rather than restarting from the beginning. However, bad endings frequently feature people escaping from the Nonary Game, so we do still have more counting to do. Additionally, the number of other players alive to enter other escape rooms varies depending on the route. Let's start at the top and go down the flowchart left to right. I'm using this excellent flowchart by @drailholsac for reference, and it might help you follow along too.
Magenta Door
There are 6 AB rooms escaped from at the start of the game. No matter which of the three Chromatic Doors Sigma chooses to enter, the Lounge, Crew Quarters and Infirmary are each escaped, so that's 9. Going through the Magenta and then Green Door, the Gaulem Bay, Pantry and Rec Room are escaped, so 3 more. If Sigma then allies with Luna, he and Phi escape the Security Room while Dio and K escape the Director's Office - everyone else is dead so that's only 2. Finally, in Luna's Ending, Phi and Quark escape the Nonary Game. Alternatively, in the corresponding bad ending, Luna helps Quark escape. That's 2 more. Quark also escapes if Luna is betrayed earlier, for 1 more.
Total for this paragraph: 23.
Yellow Door
If Sigma instead enters the Blue Door after Magenta, the Rec Room, Treatment Center and Pantry are escaped for 3 more. If he allies with K, then K escapes, but if he betrays, then no one does. That's 1 more. Finally, if Sigma goes through the Red Door second, the Pantry, PEC and Treatment Center are escaped for 3 more. If Sigma allies with Clover, then Phi and Dio escape, but if he betrays her, he joins them. That's 2 more escapes.
Total for this paragraph: 9
Going all the way back to the top, if Sigma instead goes through the Yellow Door and then Blue, the PEC, Laboratory and an unknown room are escaped for 3 more. If Sigma then allies with Tenmyouji, the Director's Office, Q Room and Security Room are escaped for another 3. If Sigma then allies with Tenmyouji and Quark, they escape with Clover, otherwise Clover escapes alone - 2 more. Clover also escapes alone if Sigma betrays Tenmyouji earlier, for 1 more.
Total for this paragraph: 9
Cyan Door
If Sigma instead goes through the Red Door after Yellow, the Laboratory and two unknown rooms are escaped for another 3. If he then allies with Dio, he and Quark escape, while otherwise K escapes alone. That's another 2. Finally, through the Green Door, the Treatment Center, PEC and Pantry are escaped for 3 more. If Sigma allies with Quark, everyone dies and no one escapes, but if he betrays Quark for Clover, then she escapes, so that's only 1 more.
Total for this paragraph: 9
Finally, if Sigma goes through the Cyan Door and then Blue, the B. Garden, Laboratory and Treatment Center are escaped for yet another 3. No further escape rooms nor game escapes occur on Alice's route. Through the Green Door, the Archives, B. Garden and Pantry are escaped for another 3. If Sigma allies with Tenmyouji, everyone dies, but if he betrays, he gets knocked out and wakes up with everyone gone, so we can assume they escaped for 1 more.
Total for this paragraph: 7
VLR Total: 65
And now through the Red Door we get the True Route. The Control Room, Archives, and B. Garden are escaped for 3 more. If Sigma betrays Phi, he opens the door but does not get out, so no one can escape. If he instead allies with Phi, the Q Room, Security Room and Director's Office are escaped for 3 more. At this stage, Sigma and Phi jump into the past and escape the AB Room a separate time earlier than they "initially" did to save Akane, so that's 1 more escape. And after that, everyone escapes the Nonary Game for 1 more, even if they go back inside afterwards.
Total for this paragraph: 8
Zero Time Dilemma
Similar to VLR, we can assume each escape room is only experienced once - decisions split the timeline only after they're escaped. Unlike VLR, other escape rooms aren't even going on simultaneously off-screen, so counting that should be relatively easy. However, there are also escapes from the Decision Game to account for. Notably, it's questionable whether some escape rooms, like the Control Room, actually count as escapes, since the players don't necessarily get to leave the room alive - however we'll say that the game going "You Found It" is enough to call an escape room completed.
Escape Rooms
Biolab
Control
Healing Room
Infirmary
Locker Room
Manufacturing
Pantry
Pod Room
Power Room
Rec Room
Study
Transporter Room
Trash Disposal Room
Total: 13
Decision Game Escapes
Coincide: Carlos wins the coin-flip (we won't count shifting to this timeline later as a separate escape)
Apocalypse: Carlos uses the transporter to go back in time and break Junpei and Akane out of the facility.
Triangle: Sean kills Eric, and Mira escapes with him.
Triangle: Sean tries to kill Mira but Eric takes the shot, and Mira escapes alone.
Triangle: Sean refuses to kill anyone. Eric kills him and escapes with Mira.
Outbreak: D-Team use the bomb from Manufacturing to break through the X-Door.
Ambidex: If Junpei betrays Carlos, it's very likely he escapes with Akane.
Anthropic Principle: If C-Team fail the dice roll, it's likely that Phi escapes alone.
Monty Hall: If Carlos successfully finds the oxygen mask and saves Akane, she later escapes.
First Come, First Saved: Each team has a timeline where they press the button and escape (though Carlos, Sean and Diana each stay behind), for a total of 3.
Suppression: Mira kills most of the players. Diana enters the X-Passes to open the X-Door, but Mira kills her and escapes alone.
These are mostly taken from a list of game overs and endings, and not every escape happens in an ending (for example, First Come, First Saved: C), so this is the place I'm most likely to have missed something. Nonetheless, the tentative count here is 13.
ZTD Total: 26
Total Escape Count: 170
Resources used
Let's Play 999, by Dragonatrix
Let's Play VLR, by Fedule
Let's Play ZTD, by DKII
VLR Detailed Flowchart, by @drailholsac
Zero Escape Wiki (I really wish there was a better option than the FANDOM wiki though...)
#zero escape#zero escape spoilers#9 hours 9 persons 9 doors#999 spoilers#virtue's last reward#vlr spoilers#zero time dilemma#ztd spoilers#long post
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remember when I wrote an exchange between Akane and Junpei in Zero Time Retcon where Akane tells him, bitterly, "How can the princess in the tower help but resent the prince with the ladder?"
That gets to the core of how I see her character. She has this single traumatic flashpoint that ripple-effect changed her whole life, and it was a critical moment of utmost, utmost helplessness. She was the most powerful psychic person on the planet at that moment. She was a twelve-year-old girl who was dragged into an incinerator by an adult man and left in there to die, and her only salvation was psychically connecting with a different guy across time and trying to find the timeline where he figured out what was happening, what the solution was, and saved her.
She developed a Complex around control after that and I don't blame her.
Akane needs the feeling of being in control at all times, and that means removing uncertainties whenever possible. It also sometimes means kidnapping because you can't risk that, in your carefully organized plan nine years in the making, someone might say, no, I don't want to do that actually. Too bad. (Sigma you're going to survive the apocalypse and save the world with me and you don't get a choice in the matter.)
She orchestrates her own death in doomed timelines. She doesn't want to stick around to watch other people choose the wrong paths and fuck it up. She specifically organizes her participation in the 2045 Nonary Game so that she only survives in the successful timeline. If she does it herself, she removes the uncertainty, removes the tedium of living through a branch of the timeline she knows is wasted, and removes the ability for anyone else to get her first.
I also think it's why she doesn't... stick around. Around Junpei, or around Sigma. Because other people are the one thing in her life she can't control, and it's way, way too vulnerable to face these people she cares about who she has kidnapped and railroaded into her plans, and ask them to forgive her. Ask them to understand. What if they say no? Vulnerability is the one thing she cannot do, ever again. Easier to just remove herself from that situation first before she can be hurt. Besides, she has shit to do, and other timelines to psychically investigate looking for the Right Thing To Do to build the future she wants. She's in control. She can work this out. And if she's lonely then no she isn't and also that's irrelevant.
#this is why I hate that line from ZTD 'we must be in the future that God abandoned'#what a good line. unfortunately Akane does not believe in any power higher than herself. She can't let herself.#Zero Escape#Zero Escape spoilers#perpetual perpetual ladies night
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Helloooo ZE fandom! Remember this post I made back in October? Here's your explanations!
Spoilers abound for all games!!
Secret Old man is a plot twist 3 different times
1st secret Old man: Tenmyouji being Junpei
2nd secret Old man: Sigma not knowing he's in his old body in VLR
3rd secret Old man: Delta's existence in ZTD
“If two guys were on the moon and one killed the other with a moon rock”
Character becomes a Schrödinger's cat in 2 games.
Akane in 999 and VLR
Fireman third wheels two people with incinerator trauma
C Team, would also like to point out that not once do Akane or Junpei mention the incinerator (or even joke about it) around Carlos
Santa is a punk that's into the stock market
Someone's dismembered Arm is microwaved
Junpei’s refrigerated arm is essentially put in a microwave to solve the last part of the Pantry in ZTD. Specifically, it had to be warmed to be open enough to activate the palm scanner
Someone decides killing ¾ of the population is best course oaction to kill 1 dude.
Delta's motive for releasing radical 6 was to kill an unknown terrorist that would otherwise kill the entire population on earth
At least one character gets their hand chopped off in each game
VLR and ZTD are easiest to explain. Sigma uses the 9 door to chop his hand off and prevent his bracelet from injecting him in Quark end (also has his hand chopped off by the other characters in Sigma’s bad end). Carlos looses his hand after being attacked by Akane with the Chainsaw in the “Suspicion” fragment.
999 was less obvious but in the Axe end, toward the very end, Junpei sees Clover walking off with his bracelet, since he was still conscious when she left, this leaves two options. First being that his heart stopped and allowed his bracelet to come off while still conscious, OR if Clover didn't want to wait for him to die and just chopped his hand off before leaving him to bleed out.
A character gets injected with a lethal poison from a needle on a book cover.
This one is the fake answer!!
I actually asked the Uchikoshi's Somnium discord server for a fake answer and this is what I was given first!
A lot of y'all appear to go tripped up on this and that might be because of the Bio Lab in ZTD. Part of the puzzle involves Sean, Mira, and Eric getting their fingers picked on something (don't remember exactly what rn but it was definitely not a book), but this was set up for the game's decision regarding Radical 6 (75% fatality rate) and Fanatic Bio R (100% fatality rate).
This decision was based on Newcomb's Paradox
Ice Cream server has one of the highest kill counts in the series.
Look at any route where Eric finds a gun, when not counting the Zeros, Eric has killed more characters directly than most of the other cast. (I think the only other characters in the higher range aside from Eric are Mira, Ace, and Dio)
I have a Google doc I've been working on with a list of rules for a solid kill count. Hopefully I will post that by itself soon.
Every Event in the Series happens because of a Snail.
Saw someone in the tags say they refuse to believe the snail caused 999 and I hate to break it to you but in the Apocalypse fragment in ZTD, Delta clearing states that if the initial incident that killed 6 people, including Akane’s parents, didn't happen, she wouldn't have gotten involved in the first Nonary game that Ace ran that was covered in 999.
Would also like to note that it was confirmed in VLR that Ace is a member of Free the Soul. How much he knows about the snail is debatable.
A character canonically has a 9” dick (18” when horny)
If youve been in the fandom for over 6 months, I think you know what this is
If there is anything else you would like clarification on, feel free to reply to this post or send me an ask!!
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Ok, ZERO ESCAPE 999. This game was a weird one for me. Definitely great, do not get me wrong--- I LOVE this game to pieces and after finishing this post I will finally start VLR during the weekend (hopefully), and mull over the characterization because what the hell, everyone is absolutely hilarious (Junpei, Snake, Seven and Santa specifically I'm looking at you)--- but it certainly left me with a bunch of questions to which I have no answers. Which makes sense considering the next game will most probably pick up where 999 left off so I won't touch on that too much, but everything really felt like a crazy, confusing, convoluted fever dream. In a good way. But still, very cryptic.
Speaking about fever dreams, June's situation is the most unique circumstance for a character I think I've ever seen. If I have everything correct (and correct me if I'm wrong), she originally died in the present timeline in the incinerator room long ago and somehow the Akane we meet in the Nonary Game exists simultaneously dead and alive at the same time in the aftermath of that event--- so basically Schrödinger's cat. The Nonary Game was set up to make Junpei save the Akane through telekinesis to create either a separate timeline or more likely influence the present one so that she can exist normally. That's why she's doomed to disappear in every ending; Junpei doesn't get to recreate that exact scenario in the incinerator room, so past Akane never reaches him and dies the way she was supposed to, meaning June ceases to exist as a consequence. And the burning fevers she would randomly get are her body reliving the memories being burned in the incinerator room 9 years ago. Did I get that all right? If so, then wow, that's not a twist I saw coming at all. Props to the creator of the game, but also how dare you doom my girl like this.
My biggest question how tho. I know that's not the best question to ask in a game where we are literally on the replica of the titanic, the exact same place where half of the cast along with other kids where brought to almost a decade ago because they were targeted by a supposed medical company and leader of said company is also part of our gang, forced into solving locked rooms while death hangs over their heads until 9 hours are over but our protagonist can turn back time without even knowing it every time things go bad, but still. If it's revealed later on then please don't tell me. If not, go ahead.
This is my second attempt to type this because my first drafts somehow didn't save and I'm too lazy to re-do everything so I'll bullet point:
•What happened to Santa in the true ending? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think he was present during our car ride. Ace was there, though, despite being taken hostage by him and led away.
•So June is alive, right? Since we rewrote the timeline and helped Akane survive, what happened to her? She vanished on us during our confrontation with Santa, so where did she end up when everything was over?
•Who the hell killed everyone in the other endings? We know Clover goes crazy in one and Ace kills her in another, but what about the rest? We know it's not one of us because every single person we have gets slaughtered in the Sub endings with Junpei last. I did make post about it and I'll stick to what I said, but I guess I'll wait and see if the next game will answer.
•Who is Zero. That's it. I was thinking it was not Santa, to gradually being persuaded into thinking it could be him due to the evidence pointing into direction only for it to have really not him. He is actually more involved than most, but he's not the guy we're looking for (good). Give me answers, game.
Well, rant over for now. I'll probably slightly touch on VLR because I have an assessment to revise for, but I'm excited! I've heard a little about the gameplay and I'm really curious to see how it will pay out.
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I’m interested in your thoughts on ztd since you said you don’t think it’s that bad (I have never played a Zero Escape game btw)
Hmmmm. I’m probably gonna state some unpopular opinions in this but sure.
So I’m gonna start by saying I don’t think this entire game was one big asspull. There are several, but lots of stuff had been hinted at in earlier entries, and… unfortunately mind hack was foreshadowed in the very first entry. And sadly, it makes the twist that Cradle Pharmaceuticals was in the pocket of Brother which I didn’t like in vlr make more sense because it would mean Delta gathering more information on that. I think it’s the way it’s written that’s so infuriating. It’s essentially a last minute plot device that isn’t really properly explained, and doesn’t even have any bearing on the plot, which is better than if it was a huge inescapable part of the plot, but good lord it feels contrived.
I also heard a lot of decrying before playing this game that everyone was ooc but I… respectfully disagree. It felt more like a sense of not knowing the characters as well as I thought I did and trying to adjust my view. Akane is not running the game for the first time so it changes the way she acts. She’s vehemently against it when Junpei wants to kill everyone and yeah. Fair. She did kill people as part of the plan in 999 but for her, those were people who put her through misery and killed her. I can understand the shift in tone. She’s willing to kill to achieve her goals but she’s not bloodthirsty, and she’s in this timeline specifically to have the life she couldn’t in the others. She wants a fairy tale future, and she’ll even ruin another chance with Junpei to have this ideal. This is Akane Kurashiki, wanting things desperately to go back to normal after the nonary game, when they never can and never will.
Sigma I was expecting more mad scientist and evil vibes out of, but I think it’s more fascinating that he’s just himself but overly serious. He’s still a self sacrificial goofy dude, and knowing who he is and what he’s done makes it all the more stomach sinking when you see that, despite the change in tone, he IS Sigma. Sigma did what he did not out of any sort of malice or hatred towards anyone, not even for his children who suffered, but because he loved the world and everyone in it so much that it was worth everything he did to save it, which is so in line with his character in VLR, but to a horrific degree.
Also Junpei being emo. I’m fine with it. He went through a death game. Old man Junpei in VLR is a good person overall but he has had moments where if it came down to Quark or everyone else, he would choose Quark and this is the same but with Akane.
The new characters are where it starts to fall apart a bit…
So I think Diana was a good character and predecessor to Luna. I don’t really have much to complain about with her. She’s a kind person. Kind enough to kill six billion people. And that’s a brilliant premise of Sigmas love interest because, for the reasons listed above, she’s the perfect foil. Kind enough to save the world at the cost of people close to you and kind enough to doom it for the people close to you.
Carlos is also a good character. Sometimes all you need is a fun goofy dude who loves his friends and his little sister. I also think he’s a parallel to Aoi in a sense. Akane is close to some dude who won’t shut up about how important his sister is, and there’s moments where she directly calls to how he’d do anything for his sister, and all I can think is if she’s thinking of Aoi in that moments. Aoi would do anything for her. He doesn’t get much in the development department despite the fact that he’s one the only ones who remembers most of the timelines though, which is dissapointing. I liked that they took away the decision to have him shoot delta at the end. That was his choice in this world, and nothing else mattered to him at the moment.
Q is also a pretty good character. He’s a sweet kid, and I enjoyed his arc where he learns his role in the game and his nature, and still wants to form relationships and be happy.
And then you have the last two…. Mira and Eric
Mira had me fascinated when I learnt her backstory. A serial killer who wanted to know what a heart is. That’s cool! I can’t wait to see more! How she develops or gets worse! She has a deep sadness that she herself can’t understand, and she does love Eric, but not for him. She doesn’t even know what she wants or even seem to understand what she’s doing is wrong. It’s a beautifully toxic relationship. But we really don’t get anymore besides two scenes. I also thought they were gonna drop the reveal that she killed Eric’s mom because of the parallels between her first victim and him, but it didn’t really come out. Sad.
Eric is a character that I can see where a lot of the hate comes from, and I can also say he’s not a good person… but he’s a very interesting and sympathetic character. He’s gone through so much trauma, he has essentially become just like his dad, and he thinks love will fix him, because his dad was so happy when mom was alive, obviously this pretty woman will make him better too. We don’t really… get any conclusion though. He flip flops between finally calming down and being better to Q than his father was to him to rageaholic murderer, and the game ends with his kind send off to him which after all we’ve seen doesn’t feel like it’ll stick, and seemingly blissfully ignorant that his girlfriend wants to murder him. Again, like Mira, this was a character we could’ve watched get worse or better but we didn’t get anything.
So yeah the two extras on Q team didn’t really develop. I understand it’s hard to have characters in a story with multiple timelines have consistent development, but give us something man. Or better yet, just replace them with old characters who’d we already be able to recognize as full characters. Have Aoi there. It’d make the parallels to Carlos more obvious. And maybe Lotus, since this sort of mars mission seems up her alley. It’d also be very funny for these two to see each other again, they see each other on the base and spiderman point at each other. Oh, I actually love the idea of an Aoi Lotus Q team. I want this now.
But yeah then there’s the worst character of all… Delta.
Delta fucking sucks man. In 999 and VLR, Zero was the highlight, and now they follow up Akane and Sigmas act with this guy. The ‘complex motives’ stuff he keeps spouting is the kind of thing you put in your first draft with a ‘rewrite later.’ next to it. Like seriously? That’s what you come up with? You could’ve drawn from resentment of being abandoned by his parents, maybe have him bring up the whole ‘Timelines you shift to have the consequences left behind’ thing incorporated while he looks directly at Akane because he can’t shift and will have to deal with whatever choices his sister and father will make. I dunno. Do SOMETHING. Also why did he kill the dog? To make him more evil? Uchikoshi why did he kill the dog-
I like his design in the Zero costume though. It looks like a plague doctor which is very fitting. He’s still a dissapointing reveal of Brother though. And hey, if Dio was a clone of him why did he have blonde hair? Why did he have blonde hair Uchikoshi-
Also the models. They’re an improvement on VLR… but still bad. I’ll give them credit on how they stylized them a bit. They have defined lines that makes them look like sketches, and a very cool cell shaded style. When paused the game looks good! Only when paused though. The second these guys start moving it is laughably bad. Sigh. I miss the first games sprites.
But anyways. I think the game had a lot of stellar moments. Akane making her decision to save the world from R6 hurt, and I also adored all of c teams interactions. Diana giving the phone call that reveals she was the one in vlr who we heard declare she’d kill 6 billion had my heart in my stomach. Carlos telling everyone he was friendly while covered in blood… was hilarious.
I think overall the game had great scenes to set up VLR and while the near ending and villain reveal were incredibly bad, I think I liked where it left off. The characters make the decision to create their own future, and break free from the shifting and loops we always see, and for finality’s sake, Carlos pulls the trigger without any alternate routes. That’s a good ending. Delta still sucks but that’s a damn good ending.
So overall, I think the game has some dropped arcs and a woefully bad villain in a game that lives and dies by its villains, but it is NOT the worst ending to a series I’ve ever seen, go watch the dr3 anime and then tell me that this ruined the series for you.
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Virtue's Last Record: Such a Time We Had Together
Tenmyouji becomes Junpei again.
Title from the Omori OST.
CWs: None
AO3
Junpei’s life and hell, his entire personality can be chunked so easily into distinct phases, and he doesn’t know if it’s impressive how fast he adapts to change or pathetic how weak his sense of self is in the face of external events.
There’s nothing impressive about how long it took him to stop being an idiot kid. He was twenty-two and still thought crypto was the future in fucking 2027.
Then the Nonary Game put an end to that, but he’s not proud of who he became afterwards. A cynical drunk who gave up so easily on everything good he’d ever believed in. He still wanted to go back and smack that version of himself upside the head.
Why the hell did it have to take Radical-6 to snap him out of that? At the very least, this was his biggest glow-up, as they’d said in his youth. In the face of a global disaster, he quit sulking and feeling bad for himself and learned how to survive. He accepted that, yeah, most people were bastards, but that didn’t matter as long as he was looking out for himself. He learned to scrap and scavenge, and he cherished the physical wealth he managed to build up way more than he would have a fortune in crypto. All his softness had long since scabbed over, but he was comfortable.
Finally, he found Quark, and bits of that hard outer shell were scraped away. What was revealed under the surface wasn’t quite like any previous version of himself. It was the best of all possible versions. He was willing to do anything to protect this other innocent life, but now he was cautious around others and financially savvy enough to provide for them both.
Junpei is not a proud man. He knows none of his growth can be attributed to him actually trying. He put in no work to become the man he is today. Still, he’s content with who that man is. He’s the kind of guardian who Quark needs, and he spends too many nights praying that he doesn’t undergo another drastic change.
Then he receives communication from Akane and it’s like the past forty-five years are undone. It’s not growth this time but a complete reversion, as he finds himself back in a Nonary Game in more ways than one. Choosing doors based on how close he could keep himself to her. Screwing the other participants over because he had some complex over “protecting” her. And now one of those screwed-over participants is his own charge.
He's devastated when Quark contracts the disease that’s ruined the world – what parent wouldn’t be? But he’s mourning too much, and somehow not enough. The grief he feels over the woman who abandoned him half a century ago is overpowering his attention, and his own grandson has become secondary. The cynical part of him, the part who’s seen it all, should know Akane well enough. He should know that she’s manipulating him and that somewhere out there is a timeline where everyone’s alive and healthy. But his cynical side is dead.
He spends all the off time they’re given in the infirmary. Sometimes Luna accompanies him for medical and emotional support. She sits by Quark’s bedside, checking his vitals with the ADAM every few minutes and holding his tiny, limp hand. She gives his grandfather frequent updates, but Junpei barely listens. He’s too busy staring at an elderly woman and pretending to be thirteen again. They would play superheroes and fantasize about who’d they be when they grew up. She wanted to be a librarian.
And Junpei wanted to be an astronaut. What a goddamn joke.
Behind him, Luna starts whispering to Quark. Bedtime stories, Grimm’s fairy tales. Fine ways to comfort an ailing child, sure. But someone who actually knew Quark could do better. They’d reminisce with him, recall the time they spent agonizing over their finances so they could choose the best time to surprise him with that root beer float. Unfortunately, the practical, emotionally available adult who formed those memories with Quark is gone. And at this point, he might never come back.
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hey how would ur pcs do in a nonary game
oh genna this is so fun. my god
merriment is dead. like. in the original nonary game he's MAYBE making it out but in a/b game version? he's dead. he votes ally unconditionally and someone takes advantage of this and he dies. full stop. he just dies.
yukina........ is doing ok. i think she's sowing seeds of discord and harm unfortunately and probably dies in some endings but not many. however. she does absolutely get someone killed at some point and she Refuses to feel bad (secretly is dying abt it)
delphinium is like. votes based on whimsy. i think she actually survives a semi-decent amnt just bc no one fuckin knows what to think of her. i think ppl put a fancy button in there and she presses based entirely on a whim. literally she does not know or care. u kno. if she dies she dies! at least it'll be interesting :) oh the one exception is if violet is there shes smashing betray every time. violet gets all sad abt this but she's also hitting betray every time so like. girl.
#actually merriment in a nonary game would be fun im thinking abt that whole party and like...... man#TY MOMTHER ROTATING THIS ONE#dnd shit#asks#huntedsmark
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Been rewatching a 999 lp recently, as some of you may have noticed. Now I have an AU for my OCs for it building lol. Maybe I should’ve arranged them in number order in this picture lmao. Other OCs’ll probably get roles when I rewatch VLR or ZTD. Details under the cut
From left to right ➡
Kyle gets bracelet 6, because in the original continuity he survives dying anyways. In this though he’d basically take the role of June almost exactly, down to being half of Zero.
Erin, with bracelet 3, also fills the role Santa has in 999, although instead of being siblings with Kyle like Aoi and Akane, she was a fellow participant in the original Nonary Game who was with him. The pair of them failed a puzzle that managed to get Kyle into the state of quantum deadness, and worked together to run the second Nonary Game to fix it a la the original game.
Vance has bracelet 5 and fills Junpei’s role. Putting him in the seat of the main protagonist had a little cognitive dissonance for me when I first thought of it, but in terms of characterization it actually fits rather well-- The man is self serving as hell. There are very few times that helping the group as a whole doesn’t benefit Junpei in 999, and when it doesn’t the game absolutely lets you choose the selfish option. Vance easily fills Junpei’s role with hardly a waver from his own “canon” characterization.
Lux gets Lotus’ 8 by virtue of their shared technological prowess. Since this cast are much closer in age to each other than the original 999 cast, she was probably another participant in the experiment surrounding the first Nonary Game. Depending on how precise the setup matches the original experiment in 999, she would probably be someone from the other half of it than Kyle, Erin, Vivian, and Zoe.
Vivian as 7 gets Seven’s amnesia. Instead of having been a cop, she was someone without the same morphogenetic qualities as the other subjects who wound up in the original experiment through sheer bad luck, probably in Kyle and Erin’s group. She may have gotten amnesia as a result of acquiring morphogenetic qualities? idk
Elise’s 4 and Zoe’s 2 put them in the roles of Clover and Snake, and their roles don’t really change that much from that. I don’t know why Zoe wouldn’t recognize Kyle, Erin, and Vivian in this since she isn’t blind like Snake is, but this AU is less than a day old and I’m rewatching all this after years of not really doing much with it. I’ll figure something out if I do anything more with this. Maybe I will make her blind for this. Life is an oyster. Elise and Lux do recognize each other but don’t talk to the other participants about it because that would mean explaining things to any of them.
Terrance gets the 1 bracelet, despite having very little in common with its holder from the game. (To be honest, if I hadn’t given him Junpei’s role, Vance would’ve taken this spot in a heartbeat, the decision process of which could easily turn into a character analysis essay for Junpei and Hongou.) I like Terrance enough that I’m hesitant to make him a straight-up bad guy, but I’m also intrigued by what could motivate him to be so. I’ll have to think about that more.
Kathleen’s in a similar position to Terrance with the 9 bracelet, but like Kyle she actually gets her number because of thematic carry-over from their original setting; she has a great power that she isn’t able to use. I’m not sure if she would keep the same fate as the original #9 or if I’d carry the theme through in another way. Again, something to think about.
On a basic level the sequence of events would be very similar to 999. If I do more with this I’ll figure out a more concrete and discrete sequence of events.
#999 spoilers#zero escape 999#zero escape#digital art#art#my ocs#bloomposting#im probably the only person who cares about this but. i do care about this#could easily make more posts about it lol
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I need a boyfriend who’s good at video games and also will let me backseat game and will play the narrative games I love but still can’t play for the life of me…
I’m bad at almost all combat. Unless you give me a “basic attack” button and a series of special attacks I can level up and select…. Basically I only know how to play RPGs. I do not have the reflexes and muscle memory to be very good at it.
Potential future boyfriend is welcomed to backseat my gaming if we bust out like the Nonary games which I still haven’t finished either because I couldn’t follow the exact logic in a freezer problem too many times… sometimes I’m just stupid.
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ZEcret Santa Fic
To: @oobi-oobi
From: @classycorgiposts
Prompt: The cast of 999 keeping up with each other after the events of the game
Me: First text to make sure I have everyone’s number.
Clover Field: Got it!
Light Field: Received
Junpei Temyouji: No issues here
Ichiro: Here
Lotus shot Seven a withering look from the seat next to him. “I *know* I have yours, idiot.”
“Yeah yeah, my bad.” He rolled his eyes.
Me: Good. Is everyone doing ok? Big lug and I are at the airport waiting on the flight now
Clover: lmao
Clover: All good here! Light and I will be getting back home soon
Lotus: Got it. Stay safe, and like that Alice woman said, if anything weird at all happens, get in touch
Junpei: Ok mom
Lotus: I’m serious
Junpei: allright, I got it
——————————————-
The moment Hazuki stepped off the plane and saw her daughters, it was like a valve opened and the turbulent emotions she’d been experiencing since the Nonary Game came pouring out, breaking her cool demeanor she’d put on for the others. Seven watched as she burst into tears and ran across the lobby, pushing her way through the crowd towards her daughters, who barreled into her arms, sobbing with joy in return.
Standing off to the side so as not to interrupt the moment, Seven pulled out his phone.
Seven: Back in Japan. Hazuki’s girls met us here- all good
Responses came within moments.
Light F.: Wonderful news.
Clover F.: SEND PICS
Junpei T.: Awesome, good to hear
Clover F.: I SAID SEND PICS
——————————————-
Sitting on the couch in his apartment’s living room, Junpei’s leg bounced up and down nervously as he watched a TV special on the news about the arrest of Cradle Pharmaceuticals CEO and the liquidation of the company. His apartment felt emptier than it had before.
Me: You guys see the news?
Snake: Listening to the report as we speak.
Seven: Took longer than it should have for this to have gone public. Cradle run hospitals here in Japan have been in disarray, they’re almost certainly gonna shut down.
Since his return home, he’d felt restless and anxious. A nervous energy coursed through him at all times with no outlet. Kanny and Aoi were gone, and all the others he could talk to about the Nonary Game were far away.
Junpei: Any leads on them yet?
Seven: I already told you I’d let you know as soon I found something, calm down kid
Seven: I’m doing the best I can, but without some kind of lead to follow, it’s near impossible. Akane and Aoi completely took themselves off the map
Sighing, Junpei continued watching the news. He needed to do something. Anything.
——————————————-
Running his hands along the desk in his study, Light felt the sounds and vibrations of the small army of groundskeepers working on maintaining the gardens and forest outside their family’s manor.
“So what’s going on?” Lotus’s voice came over the phone. “It’s unusual for you to need help,”
“So you say. I apologize again for the sudden call, but it’s our mother. Put frankly…she’s become tyrannical.” Light sighed. “She’s kept a close eye on us both since my accident as a child of course, but since we’ve returned home, Clover and I haven’t had a moment’s peace. We’re hardly ever allowed to leave the house, and her paranoia over something happening to us again grows day by day. The kicker is that we’re even particularly close emotionally.”
“Hmm. Let me talk to her.” Lotus declared after a moment’s thought. “Mother to mother.”
———————————————
“Your mom did what!?” Junpei said in disbelief. Sitting up in bed, he’d been awakened by a sudden call from Clover, groggily listening as she angrily vented on the phone.
“Yeah, bodyguards! How insane is that!? My brother tried talking to my mom as his soon a bunch about letting us be even a *bit* independent, but nothing worked, and there was no way she was gonna listen to me. But then Lotus tried to talk to her and she went completely ballistic, ranting about ‘dangerous strangers’ and us just being stupid kids!”
A sudden notification while she was ranting caused Junpei’s head to swim.
“Holy shit…I just got a huge amount of money sent to my bank account!
“What?” Clover gasped. “You think…it’s them? It’s gotta be, right?”
Junpei’s mind raced. “Hang on- I’ve got an idea.”
———————————————
Seven stood in his office with Junpei on speaker, in front of a cork board with countless photos, cut outs of internet articles, and maps connected by bits of string. It might’ve been cliche, but damn if it didn’t help with seeing the big picture from pieces of a case.
“You getting close to their estate?” He asked.
“Yeah, almost there. You know, I was really confident about this at first, but I’ve been getting nervous the closer I get. My palms are all sweaty.”
Junpei was on his way to the Field estate in a car he’d bought with the large amount of money that had been mysteriously deposited into his bank account from an unknown source.
“Man, I still feel weird about helpin’ with this too…” Seven mumbled halfheartedly. “But their mom’s basically holdin’ them hostage.”
“Right.” Junpei’s voice hardened. “
“If they manage to slip out and follow the route we planned, that is.
“They will.” Junpei’s voice grew confident. “They’ve got this.”
———————————————
Sprinting through the carefully tended forest in the pitch black of night, leading her brother and Junpei by the hand, Clover still couldn’t help but laugh with elation. The confused shouts of the bodyguards tearing apart the estate they’d managed to give the slip after days of careful planning with Junpei, Lotus, and Seven were incredibly satisfying.
She left behind a cutting note for their mother, so at least she’d know why they left, and that it was extremely of their own accord this time. The money Junpei had randomly received was a lead- one that Lotus and Seven could follow to the Kurashiki siblings. They’d meet with Junpei, hitch a flight to Japan to reunite, and then…Clover didn’t know. But it was a future full of possibility.
“Clover, I hear a vehicle.” Light said. “Is that him?”
A moment later, Clover heard the sound of tires. Just as they exited the dense forest behind their estate on a remote back road, a sedan screeched up the back road, and disheveled Junpei threw open the doors. “Holy shit, it actually worked- you got out.”
“Let’s talk later!” Helping Light into the back seat, Clover hopped into the passenger seat, quickly hugged Junpei, then threw on her seat belt.
“We can catch up shortly.” Light said, hardly out of breath. “For now, we should make ourselves scarce.”
“On it!” Junpei stepped down on the accelerator, and they were off. “I’m still getting used to this car, so sorry if the ride’s bumpy! I haven’t had to drive in a while!”
“I’m sure it can’t be any worse then Clover’s driving back in Nevada.” Light said wryly, a bittersweet expression on his face as they got further and further from home. Junpei may have brought up the plan for them to run away, but Light had been the one who heavily endorsed it and planned it out. It had been a necceasry evil, for him and Clover both.
“Rude!” Clover grinned. The adrenaline of escaping from the prison of her home still coursing through her, Clover stuck her head out the window and laughed, the wind blowing on her and the trees passing by in a blur.
A future of freedom, of searching for the truth with the only people she trusted, was in sight.
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NaNoWriMo 2021: Part I
Basically, for NaNoWriMo 2021, I’ve decided to do my own Zero Escape story but in a universe where the game series exists and without Corona! (don’t have a title yet tho)
I don’t exactly have much now but a few details like a bit about the main nine characters, some of their roles, some of the motives and a tiny bit about the setting.
Beware, my explanations may be a bit of a mess.
The characters:
I decided to have codenames like in 999, with some of the characters not remembering their names and others missing a memory or two (why? It’s a mystery that will have to remain unsolved). I’ve also decided to have the characters each be from a different country as a way to practice writing characters from different places and due to the reason this Nonary Game is happening. They are all around the same age though with them all being teenagers (still deciding the ages there).
So far we got (I’ll be putting their codenames, number, a tidbit about them and a random line I’d put for them as if they were in the Nonary Games opening cause why not):
1: Solo he/him
A boy from France who as his code name suggests, is a bit of a lone wolf. Despite being a good musician, especially on the piano, he isn’t sure what he wants to be in the future.
A hobby: cooking
A like: familiar things
A dislike: Winter
Somebody he gets along with: Infinity
“Shit. That was a bad move.”
2: Coin he/him
An Australian boy who highly enjoys sports and hopes to eventually reach global competitions. He does have a small tendency to overwork himself to the point of exhaustion and is stubborn to a fault though. However, that latter aspect of his personality doesn’t affect his skill to persuade people to his side in arguments.
A hobby: coin collecting
A like: large open spaces
A dislike: riddles
Somebody he gets along with: Mercury
“Crikey this looks complicated!”
3: Lilith she/her
An aspiring mathematician who’s won multiple competitions in both her home country of Norway and in other countries. The tad competitive girl believes in the saying of “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”, especially in a life and death situation.
A hobby: puzzles
A like: artifacts
A dislike: being treated unfairly
Somebody she gets along with: Hex
“Leave that to me.”
4: Ivy she/her
A young shy photographer from Iceland, she enjoys traveling for nice photos. Losing her arm at a young age, she doesn’t let it get to her as she wants to enjoy life and go to all the places she can.
A hobby: gardening
A like: new places
A dislike: environmental hazards
Somebody she gets along with: Kitsune
“I’m just wondering why we were chosen…”
5: Mercury she/her
Our main protagonist, hailing from Canada. Unsurprisingly, she falls into the protagonist trope of being a completely average girl, but she has dreams of traveling to places across the world to become something more.
A hobby: candle making
A like: astrology
A dislike: getting up early
Somebody she gets along with: Ivy
“A Nonary Game?!”
6: Hexa she/her
Growing up in Greece, she was surrounded by the different myths all her childhood, nurturing her love of storytelling. A sociable girl, she gets along easily with her peers which can be used to her advantage.
A hobby: sketching
A like: new foods
A dislike: boring things
Somebody she gets along with: Sea
“The question is how this story will play out.”
7: Sea he/him
The son of an influential family in a small Italian town where reputation is everything, he’s a bit of a perfectionist and is confident that they’ll make it out of the Nonary Game alive. Similar to his father, he’s learning in the ways of business to keep on his family legacy.
A hobby: martial arts
A like: films
A dislike: disrupted routines
Somebody he gets along with: Lilith
“I know things aren’t looking good right now but we have to stay positive.”
8: Infinity they/them
A young fashion designer from London known for creating practical and nice looking clothes and accessories, they’re energetic and enjoy new environments for inspiration.
A hobby: baking
A like: games
A dislike: messing up things
Somebody they gets along with: Coin
“Wait, that means that-”
9: Kitsune he/him
Our secondary protagonist, a boy from Japan who goes under a pseudonym on the internet for his art, he prefers being alone often unless in the company of close friends. He finds quite a lot of his inspiration from fiction, having been an avid reader from a young age and recreating places from them.
A hobby: flower arranging
A like: mythology
A dislike: pressure
Somebody he gets along with: Solo
“If that’s true…”
Setting:
I’m planning to have them be in a museum like environment, with the nine doors and stuff from 999. The method of watch dying however is from VLR. As of right now, I don’t have any of the specifics for the escape rooms.
I do however have plans for there to be timeline things though.
That’s all for now but expect updates here and there in the future! :D
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For the ZE Ask Game: 1b, 1e, 2a, 3d, 5e, 5f and 5n!
Thank you for sending the asks! I love talking about Zero Escape so thank you for enabling me :D
Questions from here
1b: Favourite character design?
Okay, you know how hard it is for me to pick favourite characters because they’re all wonderful and that’s why you went with this question haha. Hmm. There are so many good designs (especially with the colour coding!!!). I prefer the designs in the first two games, since they’re really bright and colourful, and the third game is darker and dingier. I like that each character has a main colour that stands out and doesn’t really belong to anyone else (except for Dio and K who both have the red and gold aesthetics, but that’s valid because red and gold is a brilliant aesthetic). I think in 999, my favourite is actually Junpei’s - I love the blue colour of his vest, and the blue vest and red shirt just. Work super well together. It’s a fashion disaster but it’s also an aesthetic I vibe with so. (also love the red blue colour coding with Junpei specifically so). In VLR, much as I loathe him, I really like Dio’s design. The top hat and the braids and the red and gold work really well together and it’s fun. Dio is super frustrating though, but his design slaps!
1e: Favourite scene?
Oooo tricky. There’s so many good moments. I think I have to go with the classic though - the moment in 999 True End where Junpei gets the safe end code, and the narration goes “How did Junpei know? He knew because I knew”. It’s so chilling and also so satisfying to see everything suddenly click. I love it, and I love watching people experiencing that for the first time. It’s like. The best part of the game, I reckon.
2a: Least favourite character?
Okay I’m trying to not immediately say Delta but like.... Delta. I think he had a super interesting concept, but the way it was executed made it so much worse. I hated that they just.... hid him from view so then the twist was that this character you didn’t even know existed was Zero? It just felt cheap. Also ~complex motives~ got really annoying - I would have much preferred it if he had said “yeah I’m only doing this to ensure my birth (and the birth of my sister). soz lmao”. Because that motive feels more real? Rather than just adding a whole random “religious fanatic” in a vague sort of way. I do like the concept of him and Phi being twins and being separated in such a way that they’re very different ages now, but again the execution of Sigma and Diana’s romance was like. Not done well.
So yeah, Delta is my least favourite because he doesn’t significantly effect the plot, barely exists, and when he is present his motives don’t make sense and his abilities are not foreshadowed at all (morphogenetic fields in 999 were good, the entire game was spent explaining the concept. Mind Hack? Right outta left field and also if we’re trying to make it work based on how morphogenetic field theory was explained in 999, the “reading minds” part of it is “extremely strong receiver”, and the “forcing people to do actions” part of it is “extremely strong transmitter”, so he should have one of the abilities but not both. And if he is a really strong transmitter.... he’s gotta mime out the action in order to write it into the fields to encourage others to follow! And I reckon natural transmitters, who are worse at receiving, are naturally slightly resistant to this, natural receivers are more vulnerable to this, and normal people somewhere in between. But yes, if Delta is gonna Mind Hacc Eric, then we should see him in the corner miming holding a gun, pointing, and firing!! Bleugh!
Wow that turned into a bit of a rant. Whoops?
3d: Rank the endings
I have been given the choice to either rank the true ends across the three games, or all the endings within a particular game. I am so bad at choices ugh.
Anyway, the true ends:
999 - it really tied everything together and explained everything. The sequence in the incinerator, seeing 12 year old Akane and 21 year old Junpei talking to each other, Junpei saving young Akane, Clover’s absolute joy at finding out Light is alive, the “he knew because I knew” thing that I mentioned above, just everything. It was a self contained story, so everything was addressed and it was good.
VLR - this is more second by default, since I love 999′s true end and hate ZTD’s true end. But overall, this is fairly solid, and I like the concept of them doing this in 2074 to change an outcome in 2028, but it loses points because it relies on ZTD to “complete” it
ZTD - I hate this true end. The game has very enjoyable moments, but unfortunately the true end amounts to “oh let’s just... SHIFT to a timeline where we all survive” and that’s it? Which just feels sort of pointless tbh. And is so unsatisfactory
Within 999, I feel all six five endings are extremely solid, and all have a part to play an a story to tell. Knife End may be the most unsatisfactory, but it’s still okay. True, Safe, and Sub Ends are the ends with credits, and they’re all full of great dialogue and story. Axe End is also great, and I love the way you get to see the other side of Clover (and I really like the art of Clover holding an axe, I actually drew it on Saturday (when I started writing these answers, but it’s Wednesday now because I’ve been busy) for a friend’s birthday, which is technically my first ZE fanart and I’ll post it here at. Some point. Knife end is a bit quick, but honestly that’s okay? Especially when considering how many bad ends the other two games have that aren’t even named. Coffin End was my first end, and I wasn’t expecting the “to be continued” so I basically just collapsed and lay face down on the ground for a fair bit, but again given how many plot locks the other games have, coffin end is chill. So 999 has the most solid endings overall.
Within VLR, there are nine named endings, one for each character, and 13 ish unnamed bad ends. The unnamed bad ends are all like.... basically as soon as you make the decision you die or whatever, they don’t continue onwards like they do for Axe End etc in 999. I like that the named endings are designed for you to learn about each character, even though some of them are kinda weak. Like Quark’s ending, we didn’t really learn about him, and most of what we learnt about him was from Tenmyouji’s ending. I agree with what you said, Finch, about how it would have been nice to get some more Quark content/bonding/something, after he wakes up. Clover’s ending was also pretty disappointing, since she vaguely alluded to 999 and then everyone killed themselves. But there were some really good ones, like Luna’s and K’s and Dio’s (very fun that Phi was about to smash his head with a rock even if betraying Luna to get to that point is painful). Actually I really like the whole murder mystery aspect of everything behind the Magenta door.
Within ZTD, I do appreciate that the endings all served their purposes, but I disliked the way there were sometimes multiple endings in the same timeline, while other timelines... had none. It just was a bit all over the shop. Most of the endings were informative for the characters, but the true end sucks.
5e: Rant about something you liked from the games
I adore all the red/blue symbolism in the games, especially in 999. The way every time the morphogenetic field is described, the transmitters are red people and the receivers are blue people. And then when you learn who the espers are, you can see how the colours align. Clover is a transmitter, and her colour scheme is a lot of dark pink, close to red, while Light, a receiver, has lots of blue in his design. Junpei and Akane can both transmit and receive (with each other), and this is shown by Junpei wearing both red and blue, and Akane wearing purple, a mix of red and blue. It’s really neat. Also, Junpei is new to the morphogenetic fields, so his blue and red is still separate, but Akane is so entwined within them, and uses them so easily, that her blue and red have mixed to become purple.
In VLR, Clover is still pink, and Junpei still has blue (even though he’s lost the red, but that could show he’s lost connection to Akane and now has no one to transmit to, although I think it’s hilarious if he was still unintentionally transmitting to Akane over the years, and that’s how she kept tabs on him and found him again for VLR.
In ZTD, Diana is red and Sigma is blue. I actually headcanon Diana as a receiver and Sigma as a transmitter (as in, he transmitted his memories to himself across timelines rather than a natural receiver ability), so I like that in ZTD they have opposite colours/each other’s colours. Phi is blue in both games and still a receiver imo.
So the colour symbolism is obviously strongest in 999, but I really like it.
5f: Rant about something you disliked from the games
In VLR, Clover says that stronger espers absorb the powers of weaker espers, and that’s why she can’t contact her brother. I hate this “fact” actually, because it directly contradicts the way the morphogenetic fields work in 999 and ZTD, and also in VLR itself. In 999, we have nine sets of esper siblings during the First Nonary Game, and since they all survived, we know that their esper powers must have worked correctly.... which means we can’t have had one Super Esper absorbing all the powers. The true end of ZTD has the powers of all the espers working together to create a resonant effect so that even Eric and Mira, non espers, can SHIFT. I also dislike SHIFTing (a rant for another day), but the idea of multiple espers in a vicinity resonating/boosting everyone’s powers makes way more sense than.... one person absorbing everyone else’s powers.
And even within VLR.... Tenmyouji does the ally/betray swapsies thing with Sigma and Phi, which means he is also remembering another timeline.... which means his powers are still working and not being absorbed by Phi and Sigma. Also.... both Phi and Sigma are using their powers and SHIFTing everywhere. Why doesn’t one of them absorb the other’s powers? Also also, we learn in the True End that Akane was in K’s armour the entire time during the timeline where Sigma and Phi most use their powers for all the bomb passwords and locations etc. You cannot try to tell me that Akane isn’t the strongest esper, ever. She simply is. If absorbing was true, then we would literally never see anyone else use their powers, because Akane is always there (FNG, 999, VLR, ZTD) and would have to be doing all the absorbing. Gah.
So I reckon, even though Clover said that, that she was simply wrong. That was the current theory SOIS had, but.... they don’t have to be right.
In any case, there are other reasons why Clover might not have been able to contact Light in VLR. The first is simply that he is dead. Another is the idea that minds linked by the morphogenetic fields have a sort of... shape. That fits perfectly with those they are esper partners with. And as the espers grow, so do their mind shapes. Clover was frozen on the 22nd of December 2028, and awoke on the 25th of January 2074. Her mind shape was not able to evolve and grow, so it is preserved. Light however has been living those 45 years, which means that’s been a lot of time for his mind shape to grow and change. Clover can’t find Light’s mind in the morphogenetic field, since it no longer looks the same, and their shapes no longer fit together. This is my personal headcanon, and it means that when Clover finds him, their minds can get used to each other again and their shapes can align, and they can be linked again.
5n: Do you have any fanart/fanfic/fangame recommendations?
Boy, do I ever? The First Nonary Game by @airdeari . What it says on the tin, folks! Airdeari has named all nine pairs of siblings, and created unique sibling relationships and unique experiences with the morphogenetic field for all of them, and woven a beautiful story together, and it’s just wonderful. It’s my favourite fic ever, to the point where I literally bound it and it now exists as a physical book in my life. Like, I cannot recommend this fic enough, it is the best.
AO3 Summary: A tale of nine children aboard a sinking ship, and the unbelievable story of how they survived.
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5i and 5l for the zero escape asks!
5i. Unpopular opinion
So here goes my take:
ZTD is not that bad and Delta is not that bad of a character.
I saw a post somewhere talking about how ZTD should or could be taken as a comedy and, in part, yeah. The models are funky, some of the things they say are idiot, and even gore moments are sometimes more funny than truly horrific (and I'm not a gore fan, although I got used to watch it in anime).
Nevertheless, I really how the game kept all the shenanigans from the other games, the thought experiences, and I enjoyed the core message regarding the consequences of shifting. The new characters were also very interesting. Even Q team, towards who I was very skeptical at the beginning, showed to be quite interesting, and relevant to the game, even if at the start they seemed the most unrelated to the series.
I came to like Delta more, lately, as a character. I think ZTD wasn't delivered in the best way, as I feel like most of connections I made come from people's analysis and simply trying to create a meaning for it. But I like to think of Delta as a tragic character who, as Phi, was born in weird circumstances, and obliged to come to knowledge of a big threat that has to be eliminated, and whose path of destruction he had already witnessed (the repeated snail story). Delta wasn't born with the ability to shift and, as such, he isn't unable to fix the timeline and save the world. But he is aware of other realities through his ability to read people's minds. Due the fact he is alive, he is also obliged to recreate the circumstances that made him possible to exist (Zero Escape plays a lot with the non linearity of time).
I haven't thought about what could he have done, due to the fact everything is presented almost at once and I do not know much more than the chain that started the whole Zero Escape series, but the fact he has lived this long, that he was probably the one who met and seen Sean die, that he had never met his real parents before because he was alive before they even existed, and at some point came to know it, they must have taken a mental toll, even if we can't certainly assure that.
Besides that, the whole possibility of Delta being a meta critic of the player who wants to the see what happens through the end is also very interesting. Especially when the game even starts by giving the player the easiest way out in the coin toss. Had the player stopped there, nothing of what comes from there would ever perceived.
Now his morality is very very twisted due the horrific tone of the game (the most gorish of all the three games) and due to him seemingly being fine with creating an option that dooms 2/3 of the population in an attempt to eliminate a supposed fanatic (in reality I believe the main point is to create the Sigma that comes do DCOM to play the decision game, but the other purpose is also included).
And that's it, there are a lot of interesting elements in ZTD. I wish they were better delivered as we only get to know most of the stuff at the end, and it also seems a bit convoluted, but it's an interesting source of points to discuss.
5l. Headcanons
These are just funny random ideas I had. Most of them are just funny, maybe a bit idiotic but I haven't thought much about it in detail. I think I ended up writing more short ideas than necessary. I hope you don't mind.
Aoi kept the original clover that Light gave in the first Nonary games and looks at it every night, thinking about him and the plan he and Akane are about to execute in 999.
Him and Light end up together after ZTD because I say it. I don't know how and Light is probably mad because of what he had already done to him and Clover in 999, plus kidnapping her again for VLR. The Fields are strong, but Aoi manages the solve stuff, probably with the help of Akane, who is an expert in dealing with severely traumatized people (Junpei).
Girlboss Hazuki and Seven also work with Crash Keys to find the fanatic. I love the potential of Hazuki and Seven together. Hackerwoman and sweet detective.
This reminds me how it would be cute if Seven and Ace Attorney's Gumshoe knew each other or worked together, as well as Junpei and Apollo Justice (two boys who suffer a lot in their games).
Btw I want Akane and Junpei adopt a bunny, and, although Akane loves bunnies, it is Junpei who plays with them the most because it's therapeutical. He is also having therapy, nonetheless. He needs it. The whole cast needs (Eric I'm also looking at you).
I believe Sigma, Diana and Phi created a shelter for cats with some weird pun name, and that's how Sigma tries to deal with all the trauma from the games.
Finally, how cute it would be Eric going with Sean to anime conventions, but Eric is the most excited about it as he likes to cosplay.
I suppose old Sigma returns to his timeline after finishing the mission, and, if so, I want him to start being a decent father. I can't stop thinking about how I was so lovely riding that Lagomorph "car", so who knows, maybe they can build a whole Funfair.
I also like to think that even in a different timeline, Junpei and Quark will meet again, in the future. Quark will have a nice family that takes care of him. It would be interesting something like, Quark running to catch a ball and Junpei catches and gives it to him. He thanks him, but the thanks carries more than just the act of giving the ball back. It's also thanking him for saving him and giving him a future. They don't know it, but they feel it.
Thank you very much for the ask. Sorry for taking this long. I hadn't forgotten, I kept thinking about it. Just didn't take my time to think and write it. Sorry...
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I’m gonna have a nerdy rant about video games please excuse me (zero escape spoilers)
K so my fave game series I’ve become obsessed with is zero escape, aka a weird bullshit series where the fandom is both small and dead as shit. Yay. And I just finished the last game, zero time dilemma. I wasn’t initially gonna play this game just cuz I heard it was kinda bad, but the ending to vlr had me curious. Plus it had Junpei in it and, well, I think he’s neat :)
But aaaaaaa
Yeah it was bad. Ill go over the good things though. I thought the escape rooms were like challenging without being toooo challenging. They were a good medium between the 999 and vlr puzzles. I liked them. I also really liked the D team a lot. Luna was one of my favorite vlr characters so it’s kinda natural I liked Diana a lot too. I also thought Sigma and Phi were really good in this game. I wasn’t to crazy about either of them in the second game but like. They’re cute in this game. And even though they’re "getting together" situation was kinda iffy, I think Sigma and Diana were cute together. The only valid het couple in this series. I’m kinda indifferent about the whole twist where Phi is their daughter. I don’t hate it, and I think it was cool how it was foreshadowed in vlr, but I think it makes some dynamics weird. Personally, I think Sigma and Phi would have a better siblings relationship but eh
Now let’s get into the bad, even though there’s so much that I physically cannot go over all of it. Idk where to even start. First off, the art style and designs had like no heart. Like everyone has interesting designs (one might even say too interesting) in the first two games. In ztd though, everyone was boring as shit. Junpei went from cool Marty McFly trans king to emo middle schooler. HE WAS LITERALLY IN JUST A BLACK SHIRT AND BLACK JEANS GOD. I’m gonna save him for later though. I’m just disappointed. Also the art style was bleh. I thought it looked nice on the cover, and I was also really excited cuz I read that there were "animated cutscenes". Y’all. Ugh. The cutscenes ended up being like the whole game. I was just watching it all go by and I couldn’t skip any dialogue without accidentally skipping important stuff. Not only that, there was no heart in it at all. I’d argue that the 3D models looked better in this game than in vlr (I’m personally not into how they changed to 3D but that’s a rant for another day), but the models in vlr had GREAT emotions! They had zero emotion in this game. I hated it. Thankfully the voice actors were able to add emotion but damn
Next is the characters. Needle to say, I didn’t enjoy most of them. I liked everyone on D team, the end. First of all, freaking Carlos. Talk about boring. Like god maybe I would’ve liked his design if he wasn’t wearing the button up and also maybe wore like any other pants aaaa. Also like hm. He uh, sure liked his sister. In a concerning way. Like it wasn’t a super obviously bad thing but every time romance was mentioned he’d be like "I don’t need romance, I have my sister!" Do you see what I mean? It’s sketchy to me.
Then we got Eric 👺👺👺. I hated this guy. First off he’s like a ripoff of Kristoph from frozen, without the fun himbo personality. And the whole time he was thirsting after Mira which ughhhh. They were worse than Junpei and Akane in 999. Maybe I’m just too gay for this shit but ughh. Also it was a thing that was pretty well established thing that his father was abusive but like. It didn’t really...mean jack shit? Honestly nothing about Eric’s character mattered, he was pretty irrelevant. Also he was super super shitty to Sean who was literally a fucking child
Then Mira. How disappointing aaaagh. Like they were literally just like "oh here’s this chick that has committed murder, this isn’t relevant at all :)". Like damn they really just had her be completely unnecessary huh. It was super obvious to me that she was the one who killed Eric’s mom and I thought that would’ve come up but. It just didn’t. I was also curious about their relationship in general since it seemed like she only got with Eric so she could kill him. And god they could’ve at least done something like idk. Make her like Dio and break into the game to cuz trouble. Or she could’ve been zero. Maybe that’s lazy but it would have been better. But no they literally did nothing with her. There was a timeline where she brutally murdered Junpei just like, for no reason I guess??? Jesus
Sean and Akane were characters I’m just meh about. I didn’t hate Sean, but I didn’t really like him either. Akane was never really my gal in 999 in the first place so hm. I think she’s funny but she’s done some sketchy stuff and idk I’d probably like her better if the games weren’t always trying to put her with Junpei every five minutes
Then there was Junpei. Ughhhh. They were trying something but ughh. He was very emo and kinda douchey and I just wasn’t into him. Which is a massive shame cuz I liked him a lot in 999, and especially in vlr. Like all I can say is that it’s a real disappointment for me
Now onto plot holes and things that didn’t get covered that should have. As previously mentioned, they didn’t do anything with Mira at all. They also didn’t properly go over Sigma and Diana’s relationship that Sigma had vaguely talked about that happened in another timeline. Carlos’s sister was not important at all and they threw in some "she’s got the mind abilities" bullshit in without really doing anything with it. The timeline shit made my brain turn into goo aaaa. We dont get closure on how the pandemic was stopped, which was the reason I played this fucking game. We didn’t learn jack shit about the third nonary game. And then of course, there’s fucking DELTA
This filled me with so much rage y’all. The game was just like "oh yeah btw there was this random old man who was just there the ENTIRE TIME that never got acknowledged ever and he’s the big bad villain of the game. Not just that, he’s the founder of the crazy cult from vlr. AND he’s Diana and Sigmas kid!" Like wow you know I don’t think words can describe how bad that was. I think things would’ve been better if he just like wasn’t there yeah. Also I guess he’s supposed to be like, the player cuz he mind controls the characters into making certain choices. Ugh. IT WAS SO STUPID MAN. And I guess the only ONLY reason he made the second nonary game was to make sure he was born which is just eghhhmm. That is too messy for me. That’s some bad time bullshit. And weird reason but okay. God
There’s literally so much more I have to say but if I don’t I’m gonna pass out so I’m just gonna take a nap and die. Moral of the story is that I’m pissed a series I loved ended so shitty and don’t play this game unless you hate yourself. The end
#dont look at me at all#i hate this shit so much i need to watch spongebob or something so i can recover from bad game#zero escape
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how do/can I get into zero escape?
Oh boy :D
Hi anon, this is probably going to get more complicated than you wanted, but I'm really glad you're interested in ZE!!! The short answer is that it's a game trilogy, so you play the games. The long answer is that some versions of the games are better/worse than the others.
The three games in the trilogy are 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (999), Virtue's Last Reward (VLR), and Zero Time Dilemma (ZTD). 999 and VLR are often packaged together as The Nonary Games. Make sure to play them in order ^^
More complicated notes and stuff below the cut (I am so sorry anon)
tl;dr: 999's original DS version is better than the port, so if possible you should play it on the DS or a DS emulator. VLR and ZTD both involve global pandemics which I think is an important warning considering the state of the world. Lower your expectations for ZTD.
999 was originally on the DS, and the port changes some things about it unfortunately!!! There's voice acting in the port + other things (which is on PC among other platforms), but also the final puzzle is changed in Bad Ways (I've only ever played the port myself, actually, but I know enough to know that the DS version is just straight up better)
I've seen people say you should buy The Nonary Games and get a DS emulator to play 999. OR you can do what I did and play the port only, I guess? I'd recommend not watching 999 on youtube either (I can explain if you need, but it's not really important except that port playthroughs are even worse than playing yourself. Save yourself so much pain by switching to novel mode as often as possible.) so even if you're planning on watching playthroughs of VLR and ZTD, you might want to emulate 999 anyways.
As for the point about global pandemics, VLR came out in 2012 and ZTD came out in 2016, so obviously they had no clue their game with plot about pandemics would be out into a world WITH one... If that's too much for you, 999 works as a standalone!!!
And. ZTD. You can also technically play VLR without going on to ZTD, but VLR's conclusion is much less... conclusive. It still works without ZTD though, and ZTD is widely considered the worst of the ZE games. That's not to say it doesn't have it's good parts!!! But it's not. as good. Lower your expectations before playing or you'll be disappointed :')
#i'm so sorry anon every time someone asks me something like this i just *goes on and on and on*#if you want more info/have more questions i will answer them
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