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troiings · 7 months
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So where do you live here? In a house. I also have cat, but cat has no name, so do not ask this as next question.
Myanna Burning as Chulpan (Lost in Karastan, 2014)
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wiirocku · 3 months
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Matthew 2:9-10 (NLT) - After this interview the wise men went their way. And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the Child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy!
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robin-in-thewoods · 8 months
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It's moomin time!
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This is actually the concequence of my au-ish story idea brainrot. It follows moomintroll's journey through some epic piracy.
I may even do a mini comic. YES. I'm down THAT bad.
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yekoc · 8 months
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so do we think that's max's plane and he just doesn't want to be on camera or is it a different private plane
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96percentdone · 2 years
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I liked AINI a lot, but the game would be seriously improved if they just made Ryuki the protagonist, because he's the one that has a story arc, and a meaningful tie to the case, and meanwhile it's very clear that both Mizukis exist not to have character arcs but for the sake of the timeline twist. More under the cut.
Part One: The Mizuki Problem
Date Mizuki doesn't have a character arc, which is a shame, because she's a rightly beloved character from the first game, and with the way her story ended there, they could have done so much more with her in the lead role. You don't even have to change any of the plot points of AINI for this, bar the meta ones. You could keep her as a genetic experiment and clone, dealing with the revelation that her shitty parents actually adopted her, while struggling because once again her father (Date) was ripped away from her. She'll even learn she has a sister, who watched over her and tried to protect her, but in doing so left her alone. That's a lot of meaty stuff! It's a lot to wrestle with, to make peace with. To grow up as a girl who had to raise herself, and the loneliness that entails, the longing for a different childhood, imagining what could have been. She'd be an excellent counterpart to Amame, who also went down her violent path out of love for her family, and is now just as paralyzed by regret. It's all right there!!
But they can't explore any of that. They rush past her feelings about all of those things, bringing them up for a scene, and then resolve them in a later scene with no in between. They do this for three key reasons, two of which I'll talk about here. The first is that half of her screen time is not actually her, it is Bibi. So they nixed half the time to explore it. Oops. But the more offensive problem, at least in my eyes, is the no spoilers policy that informed the writing. This game has a spoiler toggle, and that means the game has to be completely understandable to a hypothetical player without relying on any knowledge from the first game. Any references to the first game have to be short enough they can be excised without audiences feeling like they missed something important. So if her character arc is based on her trauma, trauma that was a key thing to explore in the first game, and how that trauma informs how she responds the revelations/events of this game—well, then anyone who is playing without spoilers for the first game would be barred from her half of the story. So we get one scene where she brings up her complicated feelings about this, where all the dialogue related to the first game can be easily cut, and then a follow up where she expresses she's fine with all this actually, and that's all she's allowed to have. I can't imagine the version of the game as it is with no spoilers, where the only thing she contends with is being a clone. How weak; how insubstantial.
Kuranushi Mizuki is first and foremost a plot device. I am not saying this because I hate her (I do not); it is just objective fact. In order for the writers to deceive us about what events happen in the past and what happens in the future, there needs to be a Mizuki identical to the one in the present six years in the past. Enter Bibi. Because of this, Bibi does not have a character arc. She can't, because she has to pass as Date Mizuki. This is the third reason that they can't give Date Mizuki a character arc: both Mizukis have to be indistinct from each other so as not to give the game up before they want to reveal the real flow chart. If they were to really get into the meat of either of their traumas, then it would cause greater suspicion in the players before the writers are ready to show their hands.
And that's unfortunate. Kuranushi Mizuki could easily be a great secondary character that could enhance Mizuki's story, in the same way our Mizuki was to Date. She's her sister, her progenitor, and everything she does is out of a desire to protect her, even her misguided choices. Their reunion, and rebuilding of a sisterly bond after they both overcome the ways their various traumatic upbringings affected them could be extremely emotional, and a worthwhile read. But they can't do any of that. Because "Mizuki" as a protagonist exists to serve the meta plot twist about the timeline, and distinct character journeys would undermine that. Because any arc that the Mizukis would undergo together would have to discuss the things that happened to our Mizuki in the first game, and they can't do that, because the game has to be a comprehensible entry point for new players.
Part Two: Ryuki's Half Slaps!
You know who doesn't have these problems? Ryuki. Ryuki Kuruto was introduced in this game, which means there is no prior context that's locked off from new players entering the series. All of Ryuki's screen-time is actually just his own, because he's an adult so they don't need to invent another identical looking character to explain why he still looks the same in both time periods. Now, he still risks having two character arcs that conflict with each other, if the Ryuki of 6 years ago has different priorities and needs compared to his present self, however the game resolves this one just fine.
Ryuki is wracked by trauma, no matter what half of the timeline he's in. The thing that he needs most is to make peace with his mistakes and trauma. His brother's tragic death and his resulting warped sense of justice, his failings during the initial HB investigation being informed by the trauma of his brother's death that happened around that time and with identical results, how that lead to Tearer manipulating and using him, and his endless guilt over that betrayal. At any point in his story, he's spiralling, just for different reasons, and you can blur the details on that just enough so every scene moves seamlessly from one to the next. The detail blurring even justifies itself because of TC-PERGE and his other mental illnesses have fucked with his perception of time and the world around him. Ryuki's side just works. He's a character with a story that's designed to work with the structure they want to have.
And you can tell it works, that Ryuki as a protagonist truly hits because I don't think a single person has played this game who came away hating him. So many people love Ryuki. It's so easy to love Ryuki, because things are happening with him, not just to him. He gets worse, he gets so much worse the more time we spend with him, and we want him to get better because when he seems to be doing alright, he's a likeable guy! He's a dork!! He's awkward!! He has his silly little hero worship gay crush on Date!! We don't want him to suffer, to go through the things he does, we want him to get better and find peace. As someone stuck on his past decisions wrestling with endless regrets, he's another foil to Amame. Someone who makes choices and wonders what it would have been like if he could undo them (hello diverge route). He's just a well-written protagonist!!
Part Three: Split Protagonists? Split Story. False Timeline? Cancelled Story.
There's only one problem: he has to share the game with two Mizukis, who have nothing going on internally, and much of what they have going on externally has very little to do with him. Bibi hates him for what he did to her under Tearer's influence, which should be very relevant and add to his story, but the structure impedes that somewhat. 18-year-old Bibi sees Ryuki just as a coworker until he shoots her. She can't value him as a friend, or have any feelings stronger than 'he's a guy she works with sometimes' because Mizuki doesn't really know him or have a relationship with him, and that would be a contradiction that gives the game up. (I mean, they could just give our Mizuki reasons care a lot about him too, but they chose not to try). Then she hates him, because he shot her and made her condition worse, a betrayal that would hurt more if I felt like they had a meaningful bond, but they don't have one. Still, there is some weight there, so I'll give them that. We mostly see this enmity from her when she's the masked woman, so...when we don't know it's her, or why she hates him, because it's a plot twist. Good replay value. But she gets over it pretty fast at the end. Still, I'll forgive all this, because it is the only thing either Mizuki has going on that really has to do with him.
Our Mizuki does not seem to care at all about her eye; she likes having Aiba, which is the opposite of a conflict. She doesn't know Ryuki betrayed them either, and she doesn't have a relationship with him, so she does a lot of investigating into the half body serial killings which she cares about for....some reason. I guess because she was there? I would say it's because of what happened to Date during explosion end, how it ripped her family apart again, but I already talked about how they can't and won't get into that, so she cares for like no reason at all. She similarly treats what happened to Kizuna as just kind of this tragic accident, but it's not what motivates her. Nothing motivates her. She investigates a bunch of stuff, and sometimes she sees Ryuki, but she doesn't have any motivations related to him, so every minute he spends off screen while she's at the helm has adds nothing to his story, for the sake of a character they refuse to give one.
I lied earlier when I said Bibi has nothing going on. Unlike her sister she has motives, and because she was a character introduced in this game she can have a character arc related to those motives because it won't spoil the first one. There's still the damning problem regarding the fact that she categorically can't be her own character in any of the scenes we play as her, but she has a motive. The hitch is her impetus has nothing to do with the HB incident, which is the thing most affecting Ryuki. She's investigating the Horadori Institute's genetic experiments on children, because that's why Horadori abused her and her sister. The things she learns about Tearer happen while trying to do something else. Horadori and Shigure didn't abduct Uru to genetically modify him; he was just a organ donor for their son. He experienced abuses, but they aren't the abuses she underwent, so they're not the focus of her investigation. The stuff that happened to Gen and Shouma is of more importance to her, because it's the same as what happened to her. Narratively, this is why Gen and Shouma are genetic experiments. They further her investigation, and add to her story. Or at least they would, if she didn't have to pass for Mizuki all the time when you play as her. We don't get to truly explore how she feels about there being other victims she could not protect, who contend with their traumas just like she does. We don't really see her make peace with all that happened, or decide to let go and move on—it just is why she's doing the things she does, while looking suspicious in a mask. Another potential character arc wasted by meta component.
Why are the strings that tie our three protagonists together so thin? To be clear, both Mizukis are extremely tied together, for obvious reasons. But their ties to Ryuki are weak. Bibi was betrayed by him and knows it, so she doesn't trust him, and wants Mizuki to stay away from him because of it, but Mizuki doesn't have a lot of strong opinions about him. He was just a guy she met while he was investigating, and he was there when she lost her eye (and dad), and now he's doing worse. He's very fucked up about what he's done to everyone, including them, because of the HB case, but one Mizuki isn't motivated by the HB case, and the other Mizuki just isn't motivated by anything. Their side adds to Ryuki's story when he's present in the scenes, but when he's gone, so is his storyline. I loved when Date talked Ryuki out of his downward spiral, and I loved his big damn heroes moment, and his sacrifice and forgiveness, and seeing him alive and well at the end. But I wish I could have seen him react to Amame's second somnium. I wish I could have seen him more in the investigations. I wish that when he was offscreen, the things that happened still reflected him in some way, just like how I wish that both Mizukis were allowed to have character arcs on full display throughout the entire game.
There is one protagonist who is affected by the plot of the game, who has ties to the other leads, and undergoes a journey in his half, but is out of focus in the back half in favor of the other two leads, but the other two protagonists are blocked from having anything, because of the restrictions imposed by meta and production elements of the game.
Part Four: So can it be fixed?
Well sure it can. The beautiful thing about fiction is there are any number of ways to solve a writing problem. The first is fuck the no spoilers policy straight to hell, even ignoring everything I just talked about, it affects the game in a bunch of smaller, annoying ways, and kinda steps on Date's story in the last game by not letting him exist in his actual body. You can take any approach you want after that knowing that whatever you do with returning characters it will acknowledge and further what came before.
After that though, there's a lot of options. You don't even have to throw the meta fuckshit to hell! I sorta opened this whole analysis with one, but I'm gonna list a few, and what kind of things they might entail, in order of the amount of work it involves:
Make Ryuki the sole protagonist. Have every part of the investigation be his own from his eyes. You can keep the timeline twist, it would still work for the reasons I said it worked in his half earlier. He's the one with the motivations, he's the one most directly affected by the HB case, and I'm fairly certain the game was initially structured with him as the sole protagonist in mind until they made some changes to account for Mizuki's popularity. It's also the easiest to do because a lot of the material for it is just already there, you just have to expand it. Mizuki and Bibi can both exist and work to serve the time fuckshit in the same way they do in canon, and he can still by what happened to them, and even investigate the stuff more personal to Bibi. Maybe he does that in part because he thinks he owes it to her, in the same way he thinks solving the HB case is what he owes to everyone. It's easy, it's strong, you can give our Mizuki emotional beats where she reacts to those reveals and struggles with her trauma, etc, but she does it as a prominent secondary character like she did in the first game, but hey she gets to do something!! She and Bibi can even afford to be more distinct from each other, more expressive of their differing motivations and needs, but their presence can blur together because Ryuki's sense of reality is fucked up. I'll admit this one is also my favorite, but can you blame me? It has everything in the base game in its best form, with the character it was designed for at the center, and it improves on all the weaker shit.
Move the Timeline Later: As in, set the events of the game in 2026, so everyone is old enough to be an adult. This one you cut Bibi. Mizuki gets to be Mizuki the entire time you play as her, and because we told the no spoiler policy to go to hell, she can have character arcs!! and motivations!!! Of course, you don't get the Bibi related stuff, but there's still plenty there. The other major change you'd have to make though is give her and Ryuki a more significant relationship. You can keep the time fuckshit, cause she'll just look the same in the past and present like basically everyone else (a detail other people nitpick but I don't give a shit about because it's just anime logic who cares). This one is roughly the same amount of work as the first one, because again the base is there, you just need to add a character story to Mizuki, and better tie to Ryuki's, which is done by changing their relationship.
Sole Protag Ryuki, no returning characters: This is the same as the other one, but you don't have to worry about old characters. In many ways this might be seem easier than the first one, cause your cast is smaller, but if you keep Bibi (because she's a new character), you need to rework her and all of her relationships. Even if you just graft her relationship she had with Mizuki onto someone who already exists in the game and don't invent another OC—you see where the extra work comes in. Again, you could cut her entirely, but I think the story is weaker as a whole if there is no character who exemplifies Ryuki's guilt and self hatred, and that's Bibi, who hates him for his betrayal. So...I'd keep her, even if it's more work, especially since he's your sole protagonist.
Sole Protagonist Mizuki: This one is for the people who want Mizuki to be the protagonist of her own game by herself, because it has very little to do most of the plot of nirvana initiative. Thus, it'ss objectively the most work. This one is gonna play more like the first game, set several years down the line, and it expands on Mizuki's story from the first game in her history as a child of abuse and neglect, and the stress of recently losing her dad again. The investigation is a serial killing incident, but the serial killing is directly tied to Horadori's genetic experiments, like say all the victims are people at his lab guilty of abusing people. There's no time fuckshit, there is no meta element, it's not the HB case, and all the characters stuff related to the HB side of things will have to be reworked so they're about the new case and/or the experiments instead. So like....Somezuki Uru wants revenge for the experiments done to him, that ruined his life, for example. Bibi still exists in a prominent secondary role, she can even be the masked woman for the first part of it until her reveal, which further's Mizuki's story, and because explosion end won't happen, Date will have to disappear for other reasons related to this case (like he got too close and the killer, Uru, abducted him to get rid of the threat), especially if you want that to motivate Mizuki. You might have to cut Ryuki for this story though, unless you rebuild his entire character so every last bit of his trauma connects to this new case you're inventing wholecloth, but I mean if this is the fix you're invested in, you're already doing so much work, so you might as well.
Conclusion: Man....
It's a shame the game was fucked from the start because of the dumbass no spoiler policy. You can make everything else work except that. The real enemy is studio execs who think marketing to the nonexistent demo of "people who play sequels without playing earlier entries" is a good idea.
Thank you for your time if you read this. This was way longer than I thought it would be.
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tenth-sentence · 5 months
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But suddenly they stopped.
"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair" - C. S. Lewis
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kingmark1st · 3 months
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youtube
#Owen Jones
Please Watch, Like, Share Videos, Subscribe
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iwantthistohurt · 9 months
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knightofleo · 8 months
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The Future Sound of London | Her Face Forms In Summertime
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polyhexian · 2 years
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Anyway china has (at least) FOUR new cyberverse characters. Hasbro is hiding the truth from you. Give me that little watermelon girl this fucking instant hello
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I would love nothing more than to pick up a new hobby. Unfortunately, I must be good at everything immediately.
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hält jemand mal die welt an ich will aussteigen
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wiirocku · 1 year
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Genesis 29:35 (NKJV) - And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Now I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she stopped bearing.
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wtfgaylittlezooid · 7 months
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I need to continue writing the sitcom au fanfic for tsp because I had so many plans for 432 and a stanarrator slowburn it was insane. Also Mariella and Stanley becoming work besties and curator helping 432…
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creativecuquilu · 1 year
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The doctor being very good at mannequin challenge.
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stump-salsa · 8 months
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If there was a rumour being spread about me please TELL ME☝️☝️☝️☝️just one of those things I’m paranoid about
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