#chatters

This will be super off-the-cuff brain dump word salad, so I might get some details wrongs, but i wanna ramble.

Things were really hype for a bit there before ending really flat. Got big "get it over with" vibes which is understandable but also kinda a shame.

Fyora not only stepping down but completely leaving to soul search felt really odd. I know she was having a hard time this whole plot and now has to face the consequences of both her mistakes with Xandra AND Drakara, but her leaving with out helping to make sure the new council goes smoothly feels like TNT saw how much people were hating on her, and decided to get rid of her. Now people are upset she is no longer queen due to there now being only one solo female leader in the world, and I can't help but wonder if this was a "we were trying to throw the fans a bone and it backfired" type situation. I hope TNT is a little more careful in the future about big decisions like this if this is the case.

On the female leaders note: Princess Lunara should probably take the title of Queen soon, huh?

On the Xandra note: If Luxinia is part of the council do you think she will free and try to help her? If anyone can save Xandra it is Luxinia, right? (Shame that people will not know the significance of this with out playing the game. Was hoping for Luxinia to retell it for the website only players. Oh well...)

On the note of councils: I hear whisperings of getting rid of all the kingdoms in Neopia, and while I get Monarchy bad, I don't love throwing the high fantasy elements of the site out the window. That said, I am surprise Lord Darigan hasn't set up a council yet. Dude seems exhausted and like he could use some help.

On another note of councils: Isn't Altador technically run by a council already? And that King Altador is only called that because he founded the place and people thought it would be a good title for the founder? I was always under the impression he was not a LITERAL king, and that was just a fancy hero title.

Back to the plot: This whole time I thought Nyx was a young adult, but looking back at discussions and the text, it seems like she was actually an older teenager??? Which makes blaming her for what happened extra not great. I remember reading the final chapter and wondering when someone was going to reassure her that none of this was actually her fault since she was basically sucked into a worm hole, but that never happened. The sharing the blame thing doesn't work when one sibling went on a spree cursing people with magic-incurable-turbo-depression, while the other sibling's offense was... Getting a well paying job to support her family???

If anything the Virtue-pets Space station ought to answer for this mess, jfc.

On the topic of Nyx, it feels like there was a lot of wasted potential here. Not once did she take a moment to process the fact that she missed 20 years of Neopia's history. 20 years of her younger brother's life. And like... I feel like there were a lot of moments to have that (campfire argument comes to mind). Some of her crash outs would have really hit harder if she was given a chance to really examine this existential crisis.

By far the best part of all of this was Iridesia. Having a prominent character on my favorite childhood game essentially magically come out as non-binary is such a huge deal. I'm used to getting characters who are robots, aliens, or side characters that don't matter. Not prominent, pre-established NPCs. So, sincerely, thank you for them.