#darious

Public Discourse: The 20th Anniversary

Buck

UNCLE BUCK!

LMAO Buck keep your eyes on the baby.

Buck why not just cut the tissue off so she only has a little in her hand to drag with her.

Oh yeah Buck you don’t eat when you want with little kids.

LMAO His first crush would be his teacher.

Ringing any bells Buck? I remember when you did this. Only you were inside not on top of it.

Did he just make a pop culture reference?

Madney

House hunting here we go.

Yeah having her in the living room isn’t gonna go over well.

What’d I tell ya?

Hen

Awe Hen’s little smile when the girl said she was a hero.

Damn Hen. How you keep breaking the pencils?

You and Buck are just big ass kids 😂

Bobby and Athena

Who’s Darious? He was the boyfriend May had right?

LOL Not subtle at all May.

Athena you better than me.

Eddie

LOOK AT CHRIS GROWING UP

Eddie you were young once. How old were you when you had your first kiss?

LOL yeah if you don’t want to be teased only talk to Carla.

Awe Eddie having his sentimental moments.

May

Watch there be an emergency and she has to help.

What’s his issue?

May not everyone is friendly.

He forgot a book on the floor.

GIRL WHY ARE YOUR WINDOWS OPEN?

Watch her become a crisis negotiator.

Emergencies

Damn how did the bees get in the suit?

Why did the writers have Hen reply to the sister? IRL they would’ve had someone pull that girl away. All talking would’ve been done among themselves.

I would’ve thrown that shit in his face. You fix it douchebag.

Damn I really thought he fell.

I doubt you ACTUALLY meant to hurt him.

See? You’re a hero.

Hell yeah. Get that letter of resignation.

Y’all really haven’t learned y’all lesson.

Miscellaneous

The Pirate's Fate is a visual novel written by T.F. Wright and illustrated by Volkenfox. It's not very good. Well, I guess that gives the wrong impression. It's not completely horrible and it's not the worst visual novel I've ever played, it's just . . . a hot mess. Visual novels are primarily story based, usually with player choices leading to branching narratives and the occasional minigame thrown in. As such, writing is extremely crucial for a visual novel, and the story of The Pirate's Fate is severely undercooked.

I bought it on a whim about a year ago, intrigued by the premise. I played it a handful of times then, and a handful of times more recently to refresh my memory. The premise is, in a world of anthropormophic animals, a spice merchant by the name of Mila is rescued by the Dread Pirates, consisting of Darious, Leeko, Morgana, and later Tam-Tam, after her ship sinks. The group then rope her into their quest to find a series of enchanted coins, which have the ability to transform a person into whatever they wish.

(using images off google because I forgot to take my own)

This is a really interesting premise for a story, and one that's very suited to the branching narrative of a visual novel. The problem, however, is that this is used less to flesh out a fictional world, or put our characters in intriguing scenarios, and more so used to show of the creator's barely disguised fetish. The story's too excited to turn Mila into hulking amazon warrior or give Tam-Tam tits the size of Mt. Everest, that many of it's more interesting ideas aren't given room to breath.

To give you a better idea, during the intro, you find a coin inside a griffon's cave. Afterwards the primary antagonist, Rourkie, holds you hostage and demands you hand over the coin. You have a set of three options to choose from, and from there the story branches out. I chose the second option, which I believe was to feign compliance and then attack. My playthrough then went as follows, Morgana died, we recruited Tam-Tam, visited Circe's island, visited a beauty temple, visited haunted house isle, had an audience with the queen, met someone named Steamchaser, visited a matchmakers shop, and finally the story ended in a mysterious library. I stopped early because I realized I was about to get an ending I saw before, so my total run time was about and hour and 37 minutes. Excluding the intro, all proceeding scenes last about 11 minutes, and with the amount of stuff that happens, that's not enough to flesh anything out.

In this route, Darious feels guilty about Morgana's death. Circe then manipulates that guilt and transforms him into a bear. That alone could carry an entire story, it's a strong if tropey character arc. But after he transforms, he has a heart to heart with Mila, and that's it. All of Darious' guilt vanishes in that one scene, and then he gets possesed by a ghost later on in order to keep the plot going. A similar thing happens on other story branches as well. In one of them, Tam-Tam is transformed from a female lizard into a male rabbit, and she's just kind of cool with it. She still identifies as female, and the conversation in the scene afterward posits her views on gender and identity, and that's it. The rest of her crewmates are totally okay with this development after this one conversation, and nobody reflects on their own gender identity beyond this.

In other branches, you find a coin that allows you to go back in time and change the past. When Darious gets possessed by the ghost, you have the option to go back in time to try and prevent this from happening. If you do, Darious ends up dying instead of Morgana, who's declared herself captain. There's a scene between Morgana and Mila discussing what happened, and that's it. Morgana isn't freaked out that her crewmates come from an alternate timeline. Nobody finds this weird. Nobody wonders what happened to the original crew she had, because she clearly wasn't sailing alone. Nobody posits about what they would've done if they were using the coin. It's just 'wow! time travel exists!' and the story moves on. Again, just like with Darious' potential character arc, this could carry the entire story. There's already a shitload of movies, books, and games based around time travel, but here it's just a plot device.

The world building also suffers from this as well. New settings and characters are introduced and then hastily thrown aside to continue the story. At the beauty temple, we get a lore dump about how the religion of the island is centered around beauty and physical appearances, but we never look beyond that. We never get to look at the surrounding town or talk to anyone else except the two characters that give us the lore dump.

In one route, Leeko gets transformed into the world greatest baker, and the rest of the gang concoct a plan to use him to gain access to the queen's coins. He'll be hired as the head baker, then after gaining her trust, then the gang will kidnap her and hold her for ransom. Aside from being a stupid plan (why couldn't you sneak in and steal the coins while the queen was distracted?), we don't see Leeko meeting the queen or gaining her trust, it just skips right over to her being held for ransom. There's also multiple times where character's say things along the lines of 'We've been searching for these coins for months'. Like, no, it's been five minutes, and skipping scenes like these only make that worse.

The other major gripe I have is that characters die for no reason. In one route, Mila, Tam-Tam, and Morgana have been captured by the queen and are going to be executed. While it's not shown, Leeko is meeting up with Steamchaser, and he agrees to use his magic to help Leeko out. A similar scenario happens on multiple routes, and no matter what, Tam-Tam is executed. Why, though? Like, in this moment, it would make sense for someone to die, but from a big picture perspective, was it really necessary? I can't think of a reason why she needed to die, other than dramatic stakes, and I don't think the story would suffer if she didn't. Also, Steamchaser uses his magic like a minute after Tam-Tam is carried off, could Morgana and Mila not have stalled for time?

Lunar beast

High Res: Darius | Aphelios | Annie | Alistar | Fiora | Jarvan

Faeowyn Wilson and Darius! 

 http://www.scp-wiki.net/uncle-nicolini-author-page