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You are more than that...

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secret promise (aug 31 - oct 28)

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Villain apologist? Nah, I don't apologize for anyone. What my lover does on his days off is not my business.

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— GINTAMA: Yoshiwara in Flames (2026) Teaser  

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What's another curse or two gonna do?

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the fake fic ask game

🐝 send me a fake fic title, and I’ll make up a summary for it!

🐑 send me a fake set of fic tags, and I’ll try to come up with a summary for it!

🦮 send me a summary I already did for one of the above two, and I’ll try to write a snippet for that summary!

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sometimes i get incredibly annoyed by the borderline helicopter-parenting LIs in otome games do like yes i can be trusted to perform simple tasks by myself, no i am not enamoured by you insisting on doing everything for me AND THEN i remember that the jar of pickles in my cupboard has been there for nine months because i cannot get it open and all the usual jar tricks have failed me and i refuse to take it into work and ask any of the very well-built labourers there to open it but also i refuse to buy a new, easier to open jar of pickles because i already have a jar of pickles and it does occur to me that maybe i am the problem.

anyway i'm reading roger's route and i really wish he were real so he could open this fucking pickle jar for me.

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Sometimes I can't help but dwell on how Alfons' Cursed death is actually a perfect match for Elbert's Cursed death because if Alfons dies first, Elbert could feel like he's missing something extremely important, but have no way of finding it or filling the emptiness left behind.

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Poor thing. Burned down to his bones. No coming back from a death like that. Oh, but... There's still the other Earl Phantomhive, after all.

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experimenting with brush i rarely use, hehe :3

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I wanted to reply to this with some salient 'I agree!' points and ended up on a tangentially related word vomit so, uh, sorry...

I have to remind myself that the settings are largely flimsy backdrops and it's very much Not That Deep because Cybird makes so many choices that undermine their own stories and it can be very frustrating.

Kate's backstory as it is would almost be perfect for the type of story that they originally seemed to be going for in the Ikevil-verse and how it was kind of advertised at the start (older, darker MC) and then they just… veer back into the standard heroine tropes at every opportunity, especially by the later routes. (I sometimes wonder if the mixed reaction to Will’s route affected some of the later ones, but idk if that was just the Western audience so…)

Anyway, the game is set in Victorian London, and while the historical accuracy is ~questionable~ there are numerous references that point to us being in the mid to late 1890s. This is just a few years out from some fairly significant postal strikes that took place over the poverty wages for postal workers which would continue into the 1900s. Historically speaking, Kate would not be on a comfortable salary, and without a husband, benefactor or some sort of inherited wealth, she would not be renting her own room above a bakery in a relatively safe area of London, eating pastries and going to the theatre. She shouldn’t be shocked by the slums, poverty, and crime - in fact, she should be fully aware of it. It should be her life. 

Imagine a desperate or weary Kate that’s been treading water just to keep her head up in an unkind world, suddenly offered a lifeline from a beautiful hand, but one that clearly comes at a cost. What choices does she make?

Imagine a Kate who’s spent her life living with that danger, seeing it take people she cares about yet does her best to be kind regardless - a Kate who is then suddenly handed the power to do something about it. A Kate who knows which slumlords are packing people into houses like sardines and taking all their wages in rent, who knows which streets the children tell each other to avoid in case they don’t come back, who knows which houses the police don’t even bother visiting when someone reports screams. 

Imagine that Kate with William or Jude stood beside her. Imagine the choices she could make. Not just as a spectator, but as an active agent with wants and wishes of her own. Imagine, even, how she might feel knowing Crown was there the whole time yet got to come back to the comfort of the castle every night…

As for Emma, I think her naivety is just part of a larger worldbuilding and narrative tone problem that wouldn’t necessarily be fixed by making her non-native to the setting. Rhodolite is ostensibly on the brink of war with Obsidian (and Jade & Benitoite) at any given moment and that hangs over all the routes, but because Emma is our POV and she is as unknowing, sheltered and surrounded by hijinks as she is, that threat never really feels real. 

Despite the previous war and Blood-Stained Rose day being big deals that are central to nearly every LI's trauma, they dance around the details in a lot of the routes and Emma cannot fill in the blanks. The three Kingdoms are dealt with fairly easily in pretty much all the routes and the anti-monarchist faction are given lip-service sympathy sometimes but generally treated as a radical fringe element that is also easily dealt with. 

The problem is, the suitability of Chevalier's faction for the throne is based on the idea that the threat to Rhodolite is significant enough that the external militaristic approach is necessary, if not preferable, over the diplomatically inclined domestic faction led by Leon - after all, you can’t negotiate with people who refuse to even come to the table. But if the external threat isn’t as menacing and palpable and unstoppable as it should be (and Gilbert does feel this way, but literally only when he’s in the room), then everything half the LIs believe in seems short-sighted and excessive. 

But we as the audience clearly aren’t meant to see it that way, they want us to believe in the legitimacy of Chevalier’s viewpoint, and that of his brothers. But without that constant thread of tension – the anxiety, the paranoia - it doesn’t really work, and Chevalier just looks like a bit of dick. (And I say this as a Chevalier enjoyer)    

I only got the three Ikevamp routes and have not touched the other games, so I cannot comment on them.

Cybird is very attached to a conservative/traditional feminine ideal (that is admittedly standard across nearly every otome game) which I think causes a lot of issues throughout the games, especially the routes with the edgier LIs, and this is absolutely compounded by the one-month-timeline restriction they tie themselves to. There often just isn't enough there to bridge that gap between where MC starts and the actions the plot needs her to take and, in Ikevil especially, it really doesn't help that they actually seem to play up her naivety and inexperience at the start of the route for the 'worst' LIs despite her needing to end up further from that starting point for the romance to really sell.

The result is that instead of dealing with what could be some very interesting conflict and self-reflection, a lot of things are quickly handwaved away through the Power of Love (and also Standing There Regardless Until They Like You.) and like you said this just veers into abuse apologism. One of the reasons Elbert's route is my favourite despite him being one of the LIs I'm least personally interested in is that Kate is very aware of the danger Elbert presents throughout the route, she considers what aspects of that he can control and what he can't, and reacts accordingly alongside the plot events.

One of the most annoying parts is that they're the ones that make the naivete often seem out of place. LIke, they could have made Kate more sheltered/less experienced and come up with another reason she stumbled upon Crown, she could only vaguely know about the dangers of the world and not be someone who literally remembers newspaper articles about murders from years before.

It's the same with Emma, she feels sooo much like she transmigrated, and if she had, they could have had an excuse why she didn't know anything, and much like with Mai being shocked and appalled by the violence of the time she found herself in, Emma could be for the world she was now in, instead of it being like she somehow never comprehended violence was a real thing.

I do love Elbert's route for lots of reasons and that's one of them. Like, yeah, she pities the guy, but also she's scared of him and proactively puts a distance between them. I also like Gilbert's route for everyone pretty much immediately pointing out he was abusing the MC and Emma is still almost partially being blackmailed into the relationship even towards the end, in order to keep others safe. Or there's even Arthur's route, where he fucks up at the beginning, everyone else is pissed at him for it and he's given actual consequences if he does anything else, and he spends most of the route apologizing and thinking he ruined any chance with the MC.

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↳ ꜱɴᴏᴡ + ꜰᴏᴜɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

ᴠɪꜱɪᴛᴏʀꜱ ᴛᴏ ɪꜱʜɢᴀʀᴅ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʀᴀᴠᴇʀꜱᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴛᴇᴘꜱ ᴏꜰ ꜰᴀɪᴛʜ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴀʀʀɪᴠᴇ ɪɴ ꜰᴏᴜɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏᴡᴇʀ ʟᴇᴠᴇʟ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟ. ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡʜᴏʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ɪꜱʜɢᴀʀᴅ, ɪᴛ ɪꜱ ꜱʜɪᴇʟᴅᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀᴅꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴀɴɪꜰꜰᴇɴ'ꜱ ᴄᴏʟʟᴀʀ. ʏᴇᴛ ꜱʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅʀᴀᴠᴀɴɪᴀɴꜱ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴀ ᴡᴀʏ ᴛᴏ ʙʀᴇᴀᴄʜ ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ᴅᴇꜰᴇɴꜱᴇꜱ, ꜰᴏᴜɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ꜱᴇʀᴠᴇ ᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ʟɪɴᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴇꜰᴇɴꜱᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪʟʟᴀʀꜱ.

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"just write a little every day" ok but what if i write nothing for 3 weeks and then suddenly type like i’m being hunted by god

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Well I like it but it’s not very well written. Also it’s a visual mess. The plot doesnt make any sense and the creators suck and its politics oscillate from mildly problematic to frankly baffling. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. However. the character