Just some RC thoughts

Cantua

Cattleya

Handroanthus (it does come in pink and possibly red, but the descriptor said golden, so...)

Mariposa

Cantus (national flower of Peru, nearly always pink but that fits better with the Falcon option so I'll use the more common version in the next post)

Erythrina (African coral tree)

Lapageria

And the Haze Will Take Us - I had such intense wardrobe envy every single episode. All that gorgeous embroidery! GIVE ME YOUR CLOTHES LADA

The Thunderstorm Saga - doing comparisons between each outfit and the Flower it was named after really makes me appreciate the attention to detail that the design teams put in. Also I am a sucker for flowy dresses and the art nouveau aesthetic

W: Time Catcher - Sooooo prettyyyyyy with the celestial motifs

Kali franchise - Absolutely stunning.

Vying for Versailles - I love historical fashion and this story is more historically accurate than usual for RC (except for the hair and Renee's bosom silhouette but she looks great so she gets a pass)

Dracula: A Love Story - Whether she's Laia or Lale, her clothes are immaculate

The Desert Rose - Gorgeous

Astrea's Broken Heart - I want a David for my wardrobe

Love, Sin & Evil - SO ridiculously over the top, I love it

PSI - not my sort of thing usually, but I kinda loved it

1. Te Amo 2 - Absolutely adorable. I'd usually play it straight after playing something miserable like HS3 as a palate cleanser. I love stories with a strong focus on friendship and I miss it already 😭

2. The Sins That Cry For Vengeance - I love The Count of Monte Cristo and doing it from Haidee's POV is a really interesting take on it. I think that 1920's Chicago works really well as a setting! I'm excited to see how it plays out with the different paths.

3. Averris: The Riftborn - Anastasia's making unpopular narrative choices, but the story, setting and main character are interesting enough that I'm still hooked. Her best story so far, I hope she manages to keep it up.

4. Waterlily - I'm not a fan of the writing style (I know there's been accusations of Klara using AI but I'm not familiar enough with AI to be able to judge. I just know I'm not into the noir-esque abrupt sentences etc), but I'm enjoying the story content & aesthetic and the characters are interesting.

5. PUB 2 - I'm in the minority here but I preferred the first one. It was pretty fun for the most part though.

6. Shadows of Saintfour 2 - It's a bit too early to tell on this one, but it's pretty good so far.

1. The Thunderstorm Saga - I always forget how much I love this book until I'm playing it. It's gorgeous and the story is gripping. I can't wait to see the fallout from you-know-what in the next update!

2. Code Blue - This one is a breath of fresh air. The characters are all unique and Jules is one of my favourite mc's. The time skips have been criticised but I think they're necessary. Jules is a workaholic and is terrible at having a work/life balance so it makes sense that quite a bit of time passes between life stuff.

3. The Missing - Faye is winning all sorts of things with this one.

4. Where Love Burns Eternal - Doing an IF version of The Master and Margarita is a mad idea and I love it. I definitely prefer the present scenes to the flashbacks, but I'm enjoying it and looking forward to seeing where she's going with it

5. Advent No. 3 - I enjoy it a lot more than I expected to, it seems like the ending is coming up fast with nowhere to go but hopefully he can pull it off.

6. The Parallel Universes Bureau Volume 1 - I know this is an unpopular choice but I'm not sorry! Yeah, it's a bit of a mess in places but it's PRETTY and I had a lot of fun. As someone who lives in the English Countryside I enjoyed the Belchester backgrounds a lot, it gave me a nice view without me having to bother going outside. There are quite a few stories at least partially set in this country but this is the only one so far that feels realistic with the language and culture* ☕

7. And the Haze Will Take Us - WE COULD'VE HAD IT ALLLLLLLLL! Gorgeous wardrobe though, probably one of my all-time favourites. This story was top tier in terms of atmosphere but like a haze it never materialised into anything solid. Alice is an excellent horror writer but like I said with Arcanum, she has yet to do a story with a truly satisfying ending. It makes me think of what Jonny Sims said about mystery & horror being very similar in terms of the plot revolving around the unknown, but very different in the resolution because mystery stories rely on finding satisfying answers and in horror that lessens the impact. I hope she manages to figure it out better with her next story

8. 7 Brothers - I think Langley bit off more than she could chew with the ambitious branching for this story, but I enjoyed it.

9. Shakespeare's Code - Like in Desert Rose, Amy struggles to communicate plot details clearly but it's still compelling. In the first few episodes I hated the mc, but as her backstory developed I grew to like her a lot more. Amy IS really good at writing characters

1. Souless - I was not initially interested in the premise, but this is an absolute Masterpiece. Best story on the app. Wincy really manages to do it all; great plot, compelling characters, lots of branching (isn't there something like 40 different endings) and beautiful writing.

2. W: Time Catcher - in any other story list this would have been my top choice. I love this story so much, the art and music are gorgeous, I like the story and I love the characters. I can admit that it does drag in the 3rd season and the ending was a bit abrupt, but it's still my favourite.

3. Kali: Flame of Samsara - Yeah there's so much wrong with this book, but it IS compelling.

4. Song of the Crimson Nile - Same as above. These two books are tied for me but I usually play KFoS first which is why SotCN is lower. I do really love Livius though, he's a sweetheart.

5. Love, Sin & Evil - Horror is not my thing, but I enjoyed this one a lot more than I expected to! It's quite campy and fun. Shame it's on permanent hiatus

6. Te Amo: The bay of hope - I really liked this one, it was a lovely palate cleanser for the misery porn stories right up until the point when it wasn't, which kinda ruined it. Especially since I was one stat point away from passing the checkpoint so I got a bad ending

7. Garden of Eden - It's misery porn as per usual for Anastasia, but it's really GOOD misery porn. She nails the balance between showbiz performance and angsty drama much better than in her previous stories, and all the terrible things that happen make sense within the context of the story and don't feel superfluous. Infinitely better than OTI and SBTR.

8. Chasing You 2 - Is this better than CY1? Yes, for many reasons. Do I like it as much? No.

9. The One 2 - Definitely deserves to be higher, but it just did not stick in my memory and the bits I do remember are lacklustre. I'd put it below One 1 tbh, although it was a good idea to have MC be a contestant instead this series.

In listing my favourite stories it's helped me figure out why I dislike the HS franchise so much and why I wasn't excited about SS4 2, and it comes down to this:

The great thing about interactive fiction as a storytelling medium is that it allows for choice. We get to choose a romance option, but we also usually get to have some influence over the main characters personality and actions. We get to make choices that affect the outcome of the story, and then we can play the same story again and have a different experience

But with sequels and franchises that either takes away our choices or retroactively makes them never have mattered.

Astrea's Broken Heart and Heavens Secret 2 are examples of both of these respectively. In Astrea's Broken Heart the outcome is predetermined; nothing we choose can change it. In HS2 the ending of HS is made completely irrelevant. The characters that died in the battle with Malbonte are brought back to life. Your relationship is over and you have to start all over again, unless you picked Andy or Loy in which case they're permanently dead. Whether you kept the status quo or turned the world upside down with Malbonte, NONE of it matters.

1. Theodora - I think this is the only story that I have replayed for every single LI route. I love them all. I love Theodora herself. I love how bittersweet her story is. I miss Arina 😭

2. Psi - Masterpiece. No notes (actually one note: Needed more Dani & more racial diversity, especially for a society that's supposedly half founded by Turkish immigrants)

3. Vying for Versailles - Another one of the stories that hooked me in. I love history so I really enjoyed the setting and the visuals of this story. It's a really good story for replay potential too. Someday I'm going to do a comparison post of all the real people vs their character sprites (the sprites are obviously much better looking to us because of changing beauty standards, but the real Armand did still have a certain something)

4. Hell and High Water - Such a beautiful story. I love that it's so hopeful despite the post-apocalypse. It's a shame the second season had to be rushed, but in my opinion Yim managed to pull it off.

5. Kali: Call of Darkness - We all know what's wrong with this book and I've talked about it before, so I won't go into all that again. It does have a gorgeous soundtrack though (I wish they'd reused some of it for KFOS) and it's visually stunning. Remy writes some terrible things in terms of content, but she does write well stylistically, her stories are vibrant and really pull you in which is probably why she's so popular.

6. The Desert Rose - The plot is an absolute mess in this book, but you can tell that Amy was passionate about it and she is really good at writing characters, it was so hard to pick which LI route to go for!

7. The Flower from Tiamats Fire - It has some gorgeous CG's and it was a very interesting concept, but I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. Unusually for RC I probably have enjoyed it more if I was a WLW player because Su is 100x more likeable than the male LI's

8. Elite Tag - Wow such a shame there was no third season of this but you know, the second one wrapped up the arc so nicely and then where would there be to go in a third series? Send Daniel off the rails? Blame MC for the manosphere? Make a trashy movie with whitewashed casting that never gets commented on? Heaven forbid. (I did really enjoy the first 2 seasons though)

9. The One 1 - This one probably deserves to be higher, but it just didn't stick in my memory despite me playing it for the first time relatively recently. I did enjoy it more that I expected it to and it does have a lot of replay potential, so maybe it'll move up the list on the replay.

1.Heart of Trespia - Wincy is one of the best writers at YSI. Possibly THE best. This book has an intricate plot that was clearly all planned out in advance and has characters that are complex and interesting and go through a lot of character development. She is really good at writing the progression of antagonists into allies in a way that feels believable. And then she gets even better at all that with Souless!

2. Dracula: A Love Story - This is the story that REALLY got me into the app. I love the novel of Dracula so I normally hate adaptions that do the whole reincarnated lost love thing, but this is the only exception for me. I can even (almost) overlook them using Luke Evans face. The worldbuilding was interesting and rich, I enjoyed the back and forth through time and I loved the deep bonds between the main characters (definitely needed more Sandra though). It's far from perfect but I love it even with its flaws.

3. Arcanum - My favourite Alice story! I love Selena/Lilith and I like that we have control over how her character develops. The LI's and her relationships with them are compelling. It is let down a bit by the ending. I think endings are one of Alice's weakest points as a writer; she hasn't managed to write a satisfying one yet which is a shame because her stories can be so compelling

4. Gladiator Chronicles - Has its problems, but I enjoyed it.

5. Love from Outer Space - It's fun! Bit creepy that you can romance Agent Wolf, I'd much rather pair him up with Agent Doe (it only just clicked for me that a doe is a deer. Agent forest creatures). Shame it'll probably never be finished, there aren't many lighthearted stories anymore.

6. Path of the Valkyrie - Story's not that memorable but the background and CG artists did a great job, it's beautiful. Also Liod is magnificent, we need more diversity with the LI body types!

7. Rage of the Titans - This story is a mess. It's hilarious that you play the goddess whose whole thing is that she's aro/ace (and an arrow ace too ohoho) but this is the most "sleep with everyone even your pet and suffer 0 consequences" book of them all. The LI's are a mixed bag too, some golden apples, some rotten. It's kinda pretty and fun though.

8. Sophie's 10 Wishes - Bad, but I did enjoy it more than I expected to. Fun bad.

9. Sins of London - I wanted to like it & there were a lot of elements to it that I would normally like, but it was really hard to get through & felt like a slog, especially on the replay. Also using a real language that has plenty of living speakers as the mystical magic language is certainly a choice. Don't like any of the characters except Abigail and she was a bit wet. Unfun bad. Also only one beautiful man in this whole book and you can't even romance him (mostly because of his jealous boyfriend)

Legend of the Willow - Played it through 3 times and if Shino-Odori's route started earlier I'd probably play it a 4th time. Lovely music and CG's, solid plot, great love interests. Best of the early stories by a mile.

Chasing You - Look. I know. This story DEFINITELY has problems, and I absolutely hate the Dylan plotline and how it was handled, but this was one of the main stories that really got me into the app. I replayed it recently expecting it to have lost its appeal but honestly? The thing that drew me into it in the first place was the dynamic between the mc and the LI gang and that still managed to charm me the second time. CY2 has a much stronger plot and I prefer the aesthetics, but I found it a big letdown because the main thing I loved about CY1 just wasn't there. I'm a sucker for any story that let's the MC have a nice gang of friends who love each other 😅

Shadows of Saintfour - I'm not a horror fan so I was surprised by how much I liked this one, but I hate the plotline of the 3rd season. The freak circus and the attitude mc has towards it on the Starving demon route was extremely ableist. Aside from that it was the best of the early books until Legend of the Willow came along. Wish they'd left Leonardo Dicaprio out of it though.

Heavens Secret - It's alright. Not really my cup of tea but it is a very pretty book. The books in this franchise are my least favourite of all of Alice's stories.

Sails in the Fog - There are so many things wrong with this book, but it's FUN and silly and I am quite fond of it (but not enough to play it again)

Moonborn - Worst of Jesters stories but still not bad. It was a much better story than I expected it to be. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the stupid villain card deck hadn't spoiled the plot twist for me.

Seduced by the Rhythm - fun concept, hated the MC and the first 2 series but the 3rd series was better and did redeem it a bit. Kinda the opposite of Elite Tag and SoS4 in that respect

Queen in 30 Days - This story is Not Good, but I do think it's hilarious that there is a canon LI but he's clearly NOT the writers favourite. You can have a pet ferret and a threesome fling with a Holly Willoughby lookalike.

Wave Patrol - Richard Armitage deserves better. At least it's short.

Vyxaria

Jules

Liren

Tiss

Ghita