#dagora

Oh ho, dragging up the oldest and strongest of my Vocaloid ships are we?This isn’t gonna be any good, I can feel it.

“If there’s one thing this world needs more of, it’s gumdrops.”

Len looked up from the piece of music he was annotating to find Luka sitting across from him. In her hand she held a small paper bag and on her face she wore a bright smile.

“Uh…what?” Len asked, studying her face. Was this going somewhere or was this just a complete non-sequitur?

“Gumdrops,” Luka said, holding out her brown paper bag as if that served as explanation enough. “Try one,” she prompted gently after all Len gave her was a weird look.

“Sure…” he answered warily, taking one of the sugar coated mounds of what appeared to be jelly. He turned it over a few times in his palm, leaving tiny speckles of sugar as it rolled about.

“There’s no need to be so nervous,” Luka laughed, “It’s not going to rear up and bite you.”

“I know that,” Len responded, his cheeks flushing, “I’ve just never heard of it before. I wanted to know what I was getting into.”

“Well, the quickest way to know for sure is for you to eat it.”

Feeling his cheeks flush once more, he popped the candy into his mouth. Slowly he began to chew.

“So?” Luka asked, her eyes glowing with mirth and curiosity, “Thoughts?”

Len allowed the silence to last a bit longer as the last of the gumdrop dissolved in his mouth. Without speaking a word, he snatched a few more of the small candies from the bag that Luka still held out. He heard he give a small squeak of protest.

I do wish it was pointed out that she does do this and then maybe she could have learned to lessen her grip but…

...then it just didn’t - that omnipresent problem that haunts Zesty.

On a personal level, one of my biggest frustrations with any game is when other party members - or the game itself - refuses to call characters on their actions. It doesn’t always have to be something huge and pronounced, but having a game act as if a potentially harmful mindset or action has zero consequences rankles me something fierce.

I absolutely love Lailah's character so I'm not gonna blame her but instead blame the shitty writing. :'D I might be willing to say it was a character flaw that she wanted something for Sorey but completely smothered his chances for growth in an overprotective way, buuuuut it really is just messy writing all over the place, and it wasn't portrayed smoothly. It's like they thought it was something to write in at the beginning and later forgot they did. :/

And I think that might have been what they were thinking of ultimately going for, but the issue is that the game doesn’t explore the negatives of this kind of relationship - it just kind of treats it as good and acceptable.

No one ever stops and tells Lailah that what she’s doing is stunting Sorey’s chance of forming his own opinions; Sorey never lashes out at the fact that she’s directing so much of his journey and he’s feeling smothered because of it. I would be fine with it being a character flaw of hers (and think it could have been worked for interesting effect), but the problem is that it’s never presented as a flaw. Even with the before-the-final-boss conversation with Lailah and Rose it’s ‘good job guiding him and protecting him! no negatives about you smothering him in the way you did nope nope!’.

It could have been an interesting character flaw, but for it to be one, it has to actually have negative impact on both Lailah and Sorey, and the game just felt like it didn’t want to acknowledge that its characters had problems. ‘Cause that would breed malevolence and all that.

dagora replied to your post: “This drove me crazy in the game. Especially ‘cause the first time it...”

I imagine Lailah had regrets in the past so she didn't want Sorey to go down the wrong path and feel like she let another person down. But it is a bit misleading to say that thing and then be all lol just kidding.

I also think they were going for this too, especially bolstered by the fact that we know she’s journeyed with Shepards before. See? That’s another interesting point they could have brought up as a character flaw for Lailah - she was projecting her insecurities, doubts, and feelings of failure with previous Shepards onto Sorey rather than letting him be his own person.

I wouldn’t mind so much the blatant self-contradiction if the game actually acknowledged it, but it doesn’t. It treats it as totally normal that Lailah would say that Sorey should form his own opinions, find his own answers, and then she immediately starts holding his hand through the whole thing. It acts as if what she’s doing is letting Sorey form his own opinions, especially since at the end of the game it makes such a show of Sorey having reached a decision even though he’s been essentially lead through this journey every step of the way.

THIS IS THE BEST POSSIBLE CHARACTER TO END THIS MEME WITH.

Why they are the best: He’s so ridiculously tsun for Jude it hurts and I love it. When I was doing my NPC run of Xillia, everyone in Leronde was so nice and sweet and happy to see Jude and then there’s Tsunpal, calling him a dumbass and saying they should have lunch. That’s just…great? I love it so much??

Why they are the worst: Because he gets zero screentime and he’s an NPC and why do I do this to myself.

a canon fact (that shouldn’t be): That god awful translation of his lines in the second game. It wouldn’t bother me as much if they had translated his lines in a similar tone from game to game, but they clearly originally translated his lines in a ‘he’s Jude’s friend but he’s terrible at expressing it’ kind of way and yet in the second game it’s suddenly ‘he wasn’t actually Jude’s friend at all this whole time’. That bothers me both on a personal level ‘cause I like Tsunpal’s character and am real upset they completely plowed over it, but also on a translator level ‘cause they may have translated the words themselves, but they didn’t translate the intention behind his words, which is just as important.

a non-canon fact (that should be): That we get a side-quest with him and Jude! I desperately want a side-quest with him and Jude!

Loni/Judas has indeed been asked, so this one is for Beryl/Hisui (which I do indeed ship along with some Kohaku/Beryl)

Your ship isn’t canon: +20

One of the characters ends up with someone else in canon: +50

The most popular ship in the fandom involves one of the characters but isn’t your ship: +50 (Uh...I don’t keep up with Hearts fandom. What’s the most popular ship? I would be inclined to say Shing/Hisui just ‘cause from past experience with Tales fanbase that’s what’s likely to happen, but I honestly have no idea)

They don’t kiss in canon: +10 ; they don’t even hug: +20

At least one of them dies in canon: +100

They’re separated permanently in canon but are still alive [separate universes/timelines, coma, amnesia, etc]: +75

One of the characters is responsible for injuring the other in canon: +50; For killing them: +100

One of the characters made another cry in canon: +10

There isn’t a lot of source material [series of only one season, no side materials etc]: +10

The source material is not in the romance genre: +5

The characters don’t really interact in canon: +25

They’re on opposing sides in canon: +60

There are less than 50 fics/fanarts for this ship on AO3/pixiv, not including the ones you wrote/drew: +50 ; There are none: +75

The source material doesn’t even have an AO3 category: +100

No one else ships it as far as you know: +60 (thanks for saving me from this one @tsungire!)

You have dragged at least one person on board this ship with you: +10

You have your own special tag for this ship: +5

You’ve written at least 5 pages of meta about this ship: +60

You regularly associate songs with your ship: +5

You’ve made fanwork of your ship [fic, art, AMV, RP, etc]: +80

FINAL SCORE: 320

Like...battle items? Key items?Eh, I’ll do top 5 for both battle and key items!

Battle Items1. Liqueur Bottles - ...These have a different name in English, don’t they...I can’t think of it so I’ll just have to go with the Japanese name. I’m talking about the item that stops you from being hit with status ailments. 

Anyways, I detest dealing with status effects but I also detest giving up one of my accessory slots to stopping those status effects. This means Liqueur Bottles are some of my best friends in the world, especially when you’re playing a Tales game with AOE status inflicting skills *coughDestiny2cough*. They don’t get enough credit for all the hard work they do. So simple and yet so effective.

2. Uchari Gel -  These are only in Rebirth, but they act as a Rebirth Doll and hooboy do I use them on some of the more difficult fights in this game. Another item that’s simple and yet so effective.

3. High Holy Bottle - This is outside of battle, but the fact that they finally gave us an item to avoid random encounters completely if we wanted to is spectacular. There are times when I’m fed up with fighting and just want to solve this puzzle/get to the next plot point/NOT BE IN THIS DUNGEON ANY MORE and High Holy Bottles help that dream become a reality much, much quicker.

4. Elixir - These probably need no explanation, so here’s a frustrating tidbit: if you use an elixir when behind the Enemy in Destiny 2, it only heals you for half HP and SP. Sure wish I had known that with Fortuna and all her love of teleporting.

5. Any of the fun particular to one game gels - Because they’re always silly and they usually make me smile with some of the wacky flavors they come up with. Plus, they usually have pretty great effects.

Key Items1. The Eleth Mixer - I adored this thing and all the fun little things it let you do. It was an easy to understand system that was super helpful and fun to take advantage of. I kinda wish they would do something like it again.

2. Illustration Book - I am a sucker for official art being used as a reward for in-game accomplishments. You can bet your buns I will do everything in my power to get the 94 illustrations in Rebirth’s Illustration book.

3. Sorcerer’s Scope - I liked this one and had fun finding stuff on the world map with it.

4. Colette’s Snow Bunny - That scene was saccharine in the best way possible and I’ve always loved snow bunnies.