21+, only reblogs sfw. Basically an archive of things I like or find interesting. Multi-fandom. Mostly Otome, VNs, ship fanart and some gacha. Not spoiler-free.
Okay so, Iāve been asked a few times about the 100% completion guide thatās out there (JP only, but itās not too difficult to machine translate enough to get the gist of things as long as you can figure out what the names are meant to be) and wanted to write an intro guide to it because it is, frankly, a behemoth.Ā
To be clear, you absolutely do NOT need to reach 100% unless youāre looking for the challenge or determined to see every last inch of the game. You can easily beat all the routes and finish the cg gallery without coming anywhere close and thatās perfectly fine. Towada, the lead writer who writes novels for a living, said the game script is longer than 20 books. And to get 100% you need to read every. single. line. This includes a lot of variations depending on both the class award status (1st/2nd/3rd/4th) and Kisaās individual award rank (1st/2nd/3rd/4th). The class awards you can skate through a bit since theyāre based on how you do on the rhythm games so itās easy to save and reset, but the individual awards are based on Kisaās skill points which is far more difficult to manipulate to be just high enough but not too high. When I refer to gold/silver/bronze routes, I am referring specifically to Kisaās award level.
There are different lines for every LI for the various scores and some of them are a fair bit after the play has ended which means that it requires going through every character route a minimum of 2 full times with lots of strategic saves and reloading. In all honesty, I am nowhere near close to completing this thing, but finishing it might take me years and I feel I have a decent grasp on how it works now so I wanted to break it down.
The rhythm games expect for you to get SS rank on every song, but I think as long as you get the right class award itās not a big issue if you get an S-rank (the only exception might be for Chuiās ending which may require all SS).
Important note: The guide itself is not currently in a 100% complete state. Monaās route guide is missing. The site owner is aware of this but cannot find the contents of the page so she said she will need to rewrite it from scratch which could take quite a long time. His ending isnāt hard to get if you hang out with him every possible weekend, but there may be small choices missed here and there. I would strongly advise keeping notes as you play! Particularly for any missed dialogue choices or weekend events and for keeping track of your save files.
General Advice:
-Keep a close eye on your stats and Enishiās predictions. The guide should list at different points where your stats should roughly be. Thereās a bit of wiggle room given the random nature of the stat bonuses (if you donāt hit 30 by the time the guide does, it tells you to keep with the skill until you reach 30 anyways, then you can switch back). You may need to reload to an earlier save if your stats are too low or high.
-Stay consistent to the guide as much as possible
-Keep running notes of where your saves are and any other issues you may come across (eg. if you were forced to deviate from the guide)
-Ion has a ludicrous amount of dialogue. You must talk to him every weekend heās available about the same song for every single song because he has unique dialogue for each one (unsure about final play songs). These are split up between Suzuās gold route, Ionās route, Mitsukiās bronze route, and Nejiās bronze route. Mona also has different dialogue for every single day heās available.
-Generally you only pick one option per playthrough but for some that might be hard to get again, you should save before the event, play through it fully with one option, then you can load and replay it with the other ones, using skip read to go through the old dialogue. To be extra safe, you can save in a separate slot after completing the event then reload.
-Keep Kisa's name as the default. I've seen people say online that this can affect completion metrics for lines where her name is said.
About save files
You should be prepared to give up at least a good 30 save slots. If youāre gonna play it super minimalist route by route you could maybe get away with around 6, but 30 seems like a good amount to play comfortably and not risk missing things. I would strongly advise you hold off on collecting those special save slots until you are close to finishing as they use over half of your slots (50 is nowhere near enough ahhh). There is a list of all the numbered save slots at the end for reference.
Overall Guide
Step 1: Finish playing the game however you would most enjoy playing it
The guide will dictate all your choices and some of them would feel pretty unfulfilling for a first playthrough of a route (eg. spending all your time with Mona or Ion instead of the LI). Itās best not to deviate from the guide choices as it can create more issues later on in not remembering what was picked or not. There are a small number of choices with lines of dialogue much later and those can be a tremendous pain to go hunting for.
Step 2: Gold Runs
I call these the āgold route runsā where basically you play through each of the LI routes with both Quartz and Kisa winning gold. As you play you will set up save points to pick up later for the silver runs and for the bronze runs. This will probably retread a lot of the same content you saw in your first playthroughs as itās mostly Kisa hanging out with the specific LI and raising his skills and not much else. Skip read is your friend. You do NOT have to play these routes in the designated order. You can if you find it easier, but as long as you keep track of which saves are where, you should be okay.Ā
On these routes, you will make saves on the following dates (exceptions noted):
*6/1 (pickup for bronze runs, not for Mitsuki), 7/13, 9/21, *12/1 (*11/27 for Kai)
Thereās also a 12/25 save for Mitsuki.
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Some of the routes also set it up for other endings. Suzuās gold run 12/1 save is the pickup point for Ionās route and Mitsukiās 12/25 is the pickup for Chuiās. So itās recommended to keep those saves still until you complete those endings as well.
Ion | Chui
Step 3: Silver Runs (can be done with Step 2)
When youāve completed a characterās gold route, use the silver medal guides to get Kisa the silver awards based on picking up your previous save points and sleeping basically all the time until the performance day. The guide recommends that you complete the designated days, save the next morning, then you can load the next save point. These generally take far less time than the gold runs.
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Kisa (side characters) also has mostly bronze/silver medals. This route can be used as a basis for getting the hidden Christmas expulsion endings (will try to write a guide for this in the future).
Step 4: Bronze Runs (complete after 2 and 3)
These are where you will use those 6/1 saves. Youāll need to save over all the rest or youāll likely run out of slots and confuse yourself. If youāve been trying to play with as few save slots as possible, you can also just restart from the beginning using the gold run guides up to this point. (Note: Mitsukiās bronze route must be restarted from the beginning)
These saves are on a wider variety of dates so itās highly recommended you check with the guide or with the save number list at the end.Ā
But generally they are around: 8/16, 10/12, 12/14, 12/25
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Step 5: Scenario Cleanup
Even after all this, you still arenāt done! In addition to the Mona route, thereās another Kisa route required. After this, you should have completed: every iteration of medals for Kisa with each LI, all the class medal ranks, all of Ionās dialogue for every song, all of Monaās events, every possible weekend event, every RNG event, and every branching dialogue option.
I didnāt see any link for the two expulsion events (this may be part of the bronze runs) but I did find an explanation about them here (JP) if youāre stuck at 99%. Basically, there are two versions of getting kicked out by the principal on 12/25, with poor grades and with both poor grades and poor affection scores. I tried to summarize it.
Grades version:Ā
Newcomer/summer: Kisa comes in 3rd or 4th; keep your highest stat below 22 and your other stats 3 or lower
Fall: 10/26 dialogue with principal; overall score on individual awards for the year should be B or lower
11/24 dialogue with Enishi
Winter: if your cumulative individual awards score is C, you will be expelled after the winter play (I went with bronze, silver, 4th, 4th for this score)
Affection version:
Still seems to require ending with an overall C score but thereās additional dialogue if affection is also low.Ā
10/26 principal dialogue if you have not seen any of the second character affection events. (note: if you havenāt seen the first one, all character affection event flags disappear after the fall play)
Winter: cumulative score of C and no affection events at 2 or higher
Hopefully, HOPEFULLY once you get to that point you will finally reach 100%. Again, I really do not recommend it unless you're really diehard about it. No idea if I'll ever get there myself before JJ2 comes out but at least having a path can help for whatever foolish souls (me) want to attempt such a feat.
List of Saves
Since the saves in the guide are referred to solely by number, I made a guide to keep track of them all for ease of reference. Saves should be made at the beginning of the day before any actions.
Ion songs: (plane tree, ms. robin, ghost party; Ion route: havenna)
1 - Suzu 7/13
2 - Suzu 9/21
3 - Suzu 12/1 (Ion save)
temp save before final song of last performance; get C for silver class award; can save over after (do this for all routes)
4 - Sou 7/13
5 - Sou 9/21
6 - Sou 12/1
*Mitsuās doesnāt seem to pickup for bronze run on 6/1, have to restartĀ
7 - Mitsu 7/13
8 - Mitsu 9/21
9 - Mitsu 12/1
10 - Mitsu 12/25 (chui save)
11 - Kai 7/13
12 - Kai 9/21
13 - Kai 11/27
14 - Fumi 7/13
15 - Fumi 9/21Ā
16 - Fumi 12/1
17 - Neji 7/13
18 - Neji 9/21
19 - Neji 12/1
20 - Kisa 12/25 (side chara run)
21? cannot find - Mona route?
ā
22 - Suzu2 7/13
23 - Suzu2 8/16 (before onsen)
24 - Suzu2 10/12
25 - Suzu2 12/14
26 - Sou2 8/16 (before onsen)
27 - Sou2 10/12
28 - Sou2 12/14
29 - Sou2 12/25
Ion songs - Mitsu2 (fortune color, great galleon, friend without a name, confession)
30 - Mitsu2Ā 8/16 (onsen) *note thereās a typo that says save 1 but I believe itās save 30
31 - Mitsu2 10/13
32- Mitsu2 - 12/14
33 - Kai2 8/16 (onsen)
34 - Kai2 10/12
35 - Kai2 12/14
36 - Kai2 12/25
37 - Kai2 1/31 (after reloading from save 36)
38 - Fumi2 8/16 (onsen)
39 - Fumi2 10/12
40 - Fumi2 12/14
41 - Fumi2 12/25
Ion songs - Neji2 (compass line, hallelujah, faded color)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
So glad to see that people have been enjoying Scarlet Hollow's rumors update! An announcement for those who have yet to pick up the game:
We'll be increasing Scarlet Hollow's price to $29.99 on August 13th, (with adjusted regional pricing) once the current discount ends. This will be Scarlet Hollow's final price increase.
So even if you're waiting until 1.0 to crack it open, now will be the cheapest you'll be able to grab the game for quite a while! (And I think exploring and theorizing with the community while the story is still unfinished is half the fun ^^)
One million words of branching content (so far), and thousands of hand-illustrated art assets await you...
If you already own Slay the Princess, pick up our special bundle on Steam for a bit of an extra discount while you're at it...
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
You, an elf, married a human, built a small farm and raised children. Your children grew up, had families, and started farms nearby. So did their children, and those childrenās children. Now your many descendants have formed a bustling city and you are known as the official ātown grandparentā.
Pokemon Soul Silver paints done over the past few months
I replayed Soul Silver for the first time since it came out (2010? Goodness) and got hit with intense feelings, I love this game so much.
I had always enjoyed the dynamic between Lyra and Silver, and wanted to imagine how they'd look in a timeskip ( āøāøĀ“ įµ `āøāø)
Now that I'm finally caught up on updating about a decade's worth of Steve/Nancy fics, we're now officially rolling out @stancyfic!
This is a fic repository for Steve/Nancy fics on AO3 (and maybe eventually elsewhere) that essentially serves as a whitelist for all genuine, pre-vetted fics that have Steve/Nancy as a central focus. Isn't this the point of the AO3 tag, you ask?
To give you an idea, the Steve/Nancy tag on AO3 has approximately 3,000 fics. You filter out the Steve/Billy, Steve/Eddie, Steve/OCs, Jonathan/Nancy, etc. and you end up with something like 1,000 works. You sort through those (background Steve/Nancy rather than central focus, temporary Steve/Nancy, and a bunch of others that can only be plucked out manually) and you end up with the contents of this blog, which at the time of posting is around 540 fics.
So, truly Steve/Nancy centric fics only make up about 18% of their own tag on AO3. Itās rough out here. But here's your 18%!
Feel free to reblog a fic to rec it, explore the tags, and share some love. This blog should work on mobile just fine, but the best browsing experience will be found on the desktop site. You'll find the most common tags pinned to the top of the blog.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
Jonathan starts out the story with a very close-knit family unit, a mother and a brother who all love each other deeply but who have already faced a lot of hardship. this leads to him having a very batten-down-the-hatches, circle-the-wagons kind of approach to life. his circle expands (minutely) as the story progresses, to include Nancy and Argyle, but he always has a limited list of people he cares for, and his goal is to protectĀ them. heāll make sacrifices forĀ them, heāll shape his life withĀ themĀ in mind. his whole universe shrinks to fit the few people who matter, and everything else fades awayāincluding the possibility that those people could find happinessĀ inĀ the wider world. the world is a threat, something to be guarded against. you canāt take on the world and win, itās not going to change for the better no matter what you do, you just have to keep your head down and deal with the tragedy of it. heās seen monsters, heās known loss. he knows all too well that the picture-perfect happy family is an illusion painted over resentment and cruelty, or even just an illusion painted over the complications that come with loving flawed people. any other outlook is naivetyāthis is why Jonathan has so little patience for Bob Newby, who is decent but simple, buying into all the things that Jonathan has already seen arenāt unbreakable. and this is why Jonathan walks away from Steve and Nancy kissing in the high school halls in season 2, not out of jealousy, just out of impatience with how juvenile and unrealistic it seems to him. theyāre playing into the image of what teenagers are supposed to be and do, the path theyāre all meant to be on, and Jonathan doesnāt have any time for that. the image is a lie. the path where you try to fit into the world and put down roots there can only destroy you. when Will feels bombarded, Jonathan doesnāt tell him that heās going to be happy and people will come to understand him; Jonathan tells Will thatĀ heĀ understands him. Jonathan will do absolutely anything toĀ be there for the people he loves; the world will do nothing for them but break them. their happiness, if they find it, is going to have the quality of escape: stepping outside the stifling boundaries of whatās expected and hiding out in a Castle Byers, somewhere they can be safe with the people they love, away from everything that wants to hurt them.
Steve starts out with a couple of merely surface-level friendships and no close family; heās an only child, he has nowhere to direct his love and devotion, and no one giving that unconditional love to him. heās already won everything small town high school life has to offer him, reputation and good looks and unsupervised freedom. when all of that is revealed to be vanity of vanities, useless trappings laid on top of an empty cynical life, he too sees monsters and comes to know loss. but his reaction to it is different. in season two, Steve still sees some value in going to a party and wearing the costumes he and Nancy worked hard on. he sincerely misses his girlfriend after an hour, without any cynicism, without needing to appear cool. heās thinking about getting a job with benefits, so he can be someone to rely on. and as soon as anyone steps into his peripheral vision, Steve loves them. he loves Dustin who orders him around, he loves Robin who makes fun of him, he loves the kids who donāt listen to him, he loves Nancy who broke his heart. his perfect popular ordinary life was emptyāso he fills it up with real things, that are still very much realĀ ordinaryĀ things. he gives ice cream to the kids and watches movies with Robin, he remembers the song that the carousel horse plays, and through it all he keeps on looking for love and believing in love. the more darkness Steve sees, the more fully he throws himself into the world. itās after heās come very near to dying that he tells Nancy his deepest wish is to have a big family and see the world with themāhe wants to bring MORE little people into existence and then he wants to introduce them to the whole of the world. he wants to have adventures with them, ordinary people in an extraordinary world, forging through it all together. and then, itās in the oppressive hell of the upside down, where darkness is literally all around him, that he confesses that the dream is still tied up with herānot some picture-perfect fantasy, but a grounded hope, rooted in his real and abiding love for her, as he really sees her. the world is dark, and wilder and more complicated than it appears. but Steve finds his hope in the most ordinary thing there is: a husband and wife and their children. heĀ isĀ the sane man in a mad world that G.K. Chesteron talks about: the normal boy who becomes the fairy tale hero.Ā
so what about Nancy? Nancyās outlook on darkness and the world is very much āride out and meet themā. she sees evil in the world, and chooses to face it head on, and then, as much as possible, she tries to shoot it in the face. not for nothing does she tell Jonathan in season one when he asks what they should do about the demogorgon, āI want to kill it.ā sheās not just being dramatic. sheĀ meansĀ it. what Nancy most wants, from the moment she discovers the tragedy and violence of life, is to eliminate evil in the world. she wants to kill the demogorgon, she wants to root out the unprincipled men who let it loose and see them punished for the harm they caused, she wants to banish the mind flayer even if she has to chase him out with a hot poker, she wants to set vecna on fire and then pump him full of hot lead.
and so, initially, Jonathanās perspective seems attractive to her, because he too is aware of precisely the evil that she wants to fight, whereas Steve seems to still be appreciating the shiny surface, the veneer of normalcy and happiness that has ugliness underneath it. āitās all bullshit,ā she tells him. she canāt play the role anymore, she canāt pretend everything is fine when everything that she once knew was poisoned by death. and not only is Jonathan aware of the darkness lurking under reality, his rejection of it is so total that heās willing to reject the entire world along with it. he so hates the evil that Nancy wants to fight that he will turn away from everything else to hide away with just her and Will. thatās romantic. it is! eros loves to say āyou and me against the worldā, and the romanticism of that does win out in season two. Nancy picks Jonathan and the escape he offers, picks him because he sees the same world she does. but as the story progresses, we see that their worldviews donāt align perfectly. theyāre not in agreement about how to deal with the world. Jonathan wants to get through his internship with a minimum of conflict and go home to his family; Nancy wants to prove herself, change peopleās minds, make a lasting difference. Nancy is starting to imagine a life she can build with him, Jonathan can only see what he already has and wants to preserve.
so what we see starting to happen in season four is Steveās perspective is becoming more and more appealing to Nancy. sheās surprised by that, and I think confused by it. it doesnāt make any sense to her, but suddenly his hopes and dreams donāt sound like bullshit anymore. the picture he paints for her of the life he wants soundsĀ nice,Ā especially because he knows what heās talking about; heās been quietly practicing for it, taking care of others younger and weaker than himself, attracting no attention and asking for no reward. itās not bullshit, itās not naiveāitās the dream she had before everything fell apart, and now it could be real. and why does Steveās hope become steadily more and more attractive than Jonathanās escape?Ā because Jonathan can only retreat, into the safety and solitude of the Byers homestead or into a cloud of smoke. Steve can enter into the world and transform it, light it up from within. Steve canĀ act,Ā andĀ Nancy is a woman of action.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Qualityā Free Actions
Free to watch ā¢ No registration required ā¢ HD streaming
