#ff thoughts

Okay, but would anybody be up for seeing Dan just taking care of Yok during the final week before he has to present his project for the art class. Because I don’t know if it’s just my experience, but that finishing stretch of finishing a project for the final presentation is often brutal. 

Dan coming to the university, getting food and something to drink without caffein. Meeting other art students. (At my uni, we’ve got the option of work stations at uni if you’ve got no space at home, and most of the time you share a room with at least two other people.) Also the chance of Dan just experiences the odd stuff you get with art students.

Dan making sure Yok gets some sleep and also maybe even talking about studying art after all. (And of course Yok being all for to because he’d be Dan’s senior in that case, but also just in the way of it never being too late to study something.)

Feel free to add ideas. 

Elex did such a great job too at introducing their motivations- sakurajima Hates food souls and are terrified of them (for the most part), they’ve been trapped there for so long, it’s a hostile wasteland and it’s all they’ve ever known, they want to see what is out there, outside of this birdcage of theirs

And what is out there?

What is outside of sakurajima, so far from the other lands? Directly opposite it, across the moon-less sea?

A land of equality for food souls and humans, where one can freely be a food soul, where they don’t need to blend in, fake their identity. A land where food souls don’t need to live in constant fear, where humans don’t have to live in constant fear. A place where there are astronomically less fallen angels, where food souls can run businesses and be leaders and just. Live.

In ankimo’s event, in one of the short stories, we see the sakurajima food souls get a glimpse across the sea. They want to tear their cage down and go to some place better. They get their glimpse upon finishing the first step of many- that land across the sea. They wonder- is there a land out there better than this? Is there a whole world out there?

And we, the players, we know. That yes, there is. Yes, it’s right across that forbidden sea. Yes, and it’s beautiful, and it’s all you ever wanted and more. Yes, it’s right there, it’s right there.

It’s excruciating, knowing what we know, and what they do not, knowing that that better life is indeed there. Knowing how terrible Sakurajima is to food souls, branding them as “yaoguai”- monsters. Hating them. Hating and hurting those oh so Terrible monsters just to wanting to live.

Knowing what we know, knowing what they see, what they want, we feel for them. We know what they’re going through is unjust, and wish for them a better world, even if it means tearing Sakurajima’s cage to the ground, even if the cost is great.

We emphasise, and want them to succeed, despite the death and pain their actions will cause, because we have seen them suffer and want them to be happier and live instead.

That

That is how you write antagonistic roles as sympathetic.

Everyone’s just like:

“Damn that sucked” “whole mess at Jade City” “Proprietor is still out of commission go fight someone else” “that whole mess”

Him meeting Peking when his MA does business with him one time and them both instantly recognising each other as food souls but Realgar wine deciding against saying anything after thinking it over because it would blow Peking’s cover and then

Peking staying around after that and Realgar seeing him in the courtyard or somewhere outside at night smoking under the moonlight and going to him

And Peking encourages him to think

To think for himself

To see himself as more of a tool

Which starts stirring something within Realgar Wine

And then Peking absolutely destroying Realgar’s MA and taking the MA’s place down, setting things aflame, and finally confronting the MA after everything else has been destroyed, and Realgar’s MA commanding him as one would a tool to fight Peking even while injured, to protect the MA at the cost of his life, something that he has no choice but to obey due to the contract between food souls and MAs and something that he thus does

And then Peking killing his MA after trying to hold back punches with Realgar and Realgar passing out and coming to in an unfamiliar place with Dragon and Phoenix tending to him and

slowly realising the extent of what his creations have done and the harm they’ve caused, while also learning to express himself and learn how to be more human over periods of time in this new place with these food souls, and feeling immensely guilty and shutting himself in to try and create things for Good purposes this time and only being successfully coaxed out sometimes by Dragon and Phoenix

And then in the event itself, Realgar going to town one day with Dragon and Phoenix after said being dragged out and glimpsing Peking, who he has not seen since that night, and him being convinced that he was here to finish him off

And after some events leaves Dragon and Phoenix’s side (who’s trailing him secretly to see what’s up) to confront Peking, and then kneeling and saying that he can kill him now, after I think also thanking him for giving him time

And Dragon and Phoenix jumping in-between them and telling Peking to not do that, all upset and frantic-like

And then Peking,

Who has not been able to get a word in thus far

CRACKING UP LAUGHING

And saying that the reason he was here was because he just so happened to be in town and thought to just see how he was coming along

Still think about that one every now and then