#eldarya takes place on different planet

[royaljesster]

I like to believe we all have the right to an opinion, but obviously that is not the case. You guys don't have to explain why I'm wrong when I never said I was right. It was a suggestion, which I will take down when I get home. I was just theorizing the necromancer. It's a game, will it even exist in ten years?

[neilada-d6-meghah]

The true route and Gardienne's personality in ANE

~I know some people get angry for some reason when someone talks about the true route, but whatever, I have to say this, if you don't like the subject keep scrolling~

I used to say that if Lance became a route, he'd automatically be the true route of the game because of the development it'd be tied to. Since they trashed all developments, now I see things differently.

Gardi got told her father was talking a lot about his daughter ever since 8 years ago, and he insisted on keep looking for her, he rebuilt her entire room to the slightest detail, and as nobody believed him, and his wife left him, he stopped talking about it and got very focused on his work. She asked if he did anything to find her, and Ignace said no. She assumed he gave up, he didn't care, and got really angry.

I take from this that she's biased on her father for the cold relationship they had before she ended up in Eldarya (making sense to The Origins, I'd also say she had soft thoughts about him remembering how they used to cook together sometimes, only because she thought she had lost him forever, now that she's back, only the memories of their cold relationship remain), and that her mind is now very black and white. Her dad wasn't around, she found him before he found her, she's not trying to understand reasons; he's a bad father.

Based on that, I can only say that the routes Lance and Leiftan are completely incompatible with Gardi. Sure, their routes exist, you can play them and have a blast (I sure do with Lance), but in my head, if the story wasn't based on the player's choices, the current Gardi, by the way she thinks, would never make room in her head to try to understand a villain, as much as they are making efforts.

Her father gave clear signs of caring so much for her: rebuilding her room just like it was before inch by inch from memory, trying to convince people to keep (not "start") looking for her to the point that his wife ended up abandoning him, and even after he stopped insisting, he still gave orders to receive her home if she ever came back, and kept talking about her to Ignace, he even drew her, so Ignace could recognize her, and as soon as she appeared he got people to look for her and pick her up whatever it costs (let's not forget she told Ignace she was captured)... if she didn't had the mind to try understanding her father, the fact that he had to work a lot to give her the life she used to enjoy, and the fact that Ignace literally can't remember if they were looking all over the planet for her before she drank the potion... she's in my opinion completely unable to be in a relationship with any former villains.

All the information is there for her to take it and understand him, but she's unable to, she can only think about how bad it felt for her before, and that says more to her than the new information.

This doesn't make her a bad person, though, she's completely in her right to think about herself. All the opposite, I'm glad she's finally caring more for her than the rest of the world, but it does take away all the empathy she used to have and was a key part of her personality. She used to care and try to feel for everyone, which was the reason the Fenghuangs offered her a place among them. The change from the first season to the second one sadly brought a whole change of view about the world, it used to be about grey areas, now it is a very drastic black and white situation.

Sure, I see it through Gardi, but just look at Lance and Leif, both of them are ashamed of their past, and only because they think they used to be completely wrong Gardi can now see them as something else. I'm pretty sure under the first season's point of view, they would still not be proud of what they did, but they would embrace it too as a part of them that they understand; now having a wider and wiser view of life, they can see why being on the good side is better. Personally, I loved the game for the old view, you can blame it on my growing up watching Star Wars kind of life, but it makes the new season too closed-minded for my taste (which it's a shame as my favorite route had to make bad propaganda for himself in order to fit the tastes of supervisor who didn't like him to start with, instead of the tastes of the people who were in love with him the way he was from the very start).

For now I'm divided between Nevra and Mathieu as for which one is the true route. Since we're on Mathieu's arc right now, everything is kind of made for people in his route, but it still feels very right to be in Nevra's route, it makes a lot of sense since they were friends/lovers before, but again, Mathieu is the one person Gardi can completely understand, and they sure have a great development so far, he's probably the only route who had a good development...

Let's wait for Nevra's arc to see if Math still stands.

[barbecuedphoenix]

200 Followers: 11 Things About Me

So I was re-tagged a week ago by @eldarya-scenarios. (I had no idea I tagged you twice, dear. ^_^ Having two aliases is awfully sneaky.) 

If you’re a little curious on who your friendly fan blogger is behind the Leiftan icon and the barrage of text-winks, feel free to read on. Watch out though: it’s a long post like everything else I write... 

And if not, please continue to enjoy this blog’s smart-assery and the text-winks. ;)

1) Why did you name your blog the way you did? ...Because that’s the screen-name I use for my main Eldarya account. I’m not very creative with names. :( Not to mention that it’s probably very politically-incorrect to say ‘Barbecued Phoenix’ in the faery realm. Huang Hua would not be amused. And my blog is guaranteed to be politically-incorrect as far as folklore and faeries are concerned. ;) My screen-name is actually homage to a Neil Gaiman short-story called ‘Sunbird’, which is still one of my favorites from its double serving of dark humor and culinary catastrophes. And it sounds really funny when you say it out-loud (at least that’s my opinion).

2) What was your last meal? *checks bowl next to laptop* Eh… a fruit salad I scraped together from some Rainier cherries and leftover cantaloupe slices. It’s summer here, and I enjoy my fruits. :)

3) Jeans or skirts? …I must have at least nine different pairs of jeans in my closet, half of which I don’t even wear most days. And just one pencil skirt. Because at least once in my life, I’ll need to go to a court room. So there’s your answer. :)  

4) What’s your favourite letter of the alphabet? In the English alphabet, ‘L’ is my favorite. It just rollllls off the tongue so nicely. :) 

5) Favourite fandom/shipping? I’m a mercenary crack-ship writer. Anything goes so long as characters are in-character. ;) *cough* Truthfully, I haven’t shipped anything in a fandom since I was eleven or twelve, and that was waaaay back when the cartoon series Avatar the Last Airbender premiered. I think that experience has inoculated me to serious shipping. So now, while I enjoy seeing a well-developed, well-paced canon romance (because it means the creators have really thought the story through), it’s never a huge concern for me who’s paired up with whom. Romance isn’t actually the selling point for me for a lot of stories; it’s individual character development and plot direction that counts.   And anyway… fan shipping is really a fabrication. With a bit of imagination, effort, and tactical writing, functional relationships can be spun between anything and anyone, and unraveled in the same way. Even when keeping all parties in character. So why blow a gasket over shipping? To each their own dirty little fancies. ;)

As for my fandoms… they’re a patchwork quilt of games, books, movies, TV shows, anime from a lot of different sources, and it changes every year. For the sake of time, I’ll give a rundown of just the fantasy/supernatural genres I’ve been following for a while (translating some of the titles to English when possible):  

Games: the Dragon Age series, Folklore (also called FolksSoul), Uncharted, the Persona series 

Books: Discworld, His Dark Materials, the Dr. Siri Paiboun series, the Temeraire series, The Tiger’s Wife, Brisingamen, pretty much anything done by Neil Gaiman… the list goes on. With a few rare exceptions, I’ve shifted from being a high fantasy lover (those tropes get old after a while) to an acolyte of more low-key genres like magical-realism, fantasy-historical-fiction, and satirical-fantasy.  

TV Shows: Supernatural  

Anime & Cartoons: the Fate series (even though my fanfiction ends up making fun of it 95% of the time, it’s still a really intricate universe), the Avatar series  

Movies: Practically anything done by Studio Ghibli and Tomm Moore, ‘Coraline’, ‘Corpse Bride’, ‘Therapy for a Vampire’, ‘Let the Right One In’, ‘Groundhog Day’, the very first installation of ‘The Hobbit’   

6) What’s your favourite sport? (You don’t necessarily have to play it) Favorite sport I can’t do, but love to watch: Surfing. Forget berserk football matches; give me a crazy Australian riding a tunnel wave any day. :D  Favorite sport I can do: Bicycling. I’m no Tour de France candidate, but my bike regularly takes its share of unreasonable hills and descents in the city where I live. Personally, It’s a great way to get around. ^_^

7) What’s your idea of a perfect day? Getting everything on my list done with minimal coffee and hair-pulling.  -_- Sorry… I’m still listening to the robot half of my brain. Switching over.  Start the day by making a difference and sharing a good time with both the students I see where I work, and the odd friends and colleagues I do have. Attend a really good lecture. Then take a quiet bus ride to the beach or an aquarium, where I can watch all the wildlife shenanigans I want. Tourists included. Cook something awesome for lunch or dinner, and eat it to discover that it’s still more awesome. End the day with a good book, an avalanche of blankets, and a conveniently-rainy night. And maybe a quick Skype/phone call with my dad.  ;( Oh there I go, listening to the sappy half of my brain. Switching over.  

8) What animal do you hate with all your soul? The logical part of my brain tells me I have no cause to loathe any animal for existing. But the cave-woman part of my brain still gets creeped out by a few of them…. Geckos especially. Because the house where I grew up was infested with them (like a typical equatorial house, actually). The geckos could be found on absolutely any flat surface, even the underside of the table and on the ceiling, so we always had to check right before sitting down that something cold, bug-eyed, and squirmy wasn’t going to drop on us in the middle of dinner. And they also liked to appear in other surprising places: like in your shoes (as my father found out one day while rushing to work), inside drawers, inside trash cans, crushed between door hinges, trapped in the kitchen sink, and inside the refrigerator a couple of times (worst idea ever, for a lizard).      One of the best things that happened to me on moving to this corner of the United States: no geckos anywhere. I can clean my apartment with an easy heart. \o/    

9) Can you dance? Besides some lingering muscle memory from my early days doing classical ballet... no. :(  I’d really like to take up Spanish Flamenco though. Generally, I do better with choreographed dances rather than impromptu club-dancing. As all my friends have told me. I’ve given them so many priceless memories on the dance-floor… 

10) What’s the name and age of your favourite character? (OC or otherwise) I can’t decide on a ‘favorite’ character in media; there’s too many of them. So how about a favorite OC instead? ^_^   Right now among the Eldarya OC cast, my favorite would have to be Zephania ‘Zee’ Tantiango because she’s a magnet for trouble as a protagonist very dynamic heroine to work with. (She’s 23, in case you’re interested.) Zee is actually the latest incarnation of the ‘funny-but-unlucky action heroine’ archetype I’ve spent years working on, and I’m happy with how she’s turning out so far. On one hand, she’s the typical small-town heroine who’s sharp, plucky, energetic, and more than a little kooky herself; the story never stops moving once she starts improvising in a tight situation. :) But there’s a strong undercurrent of tragedy in the way she continues to isolate herself through her pride and her decisions, especially because she’s allergic to either admitting that she’s in real trouble, or cutting herself some slack for her mistakes. There’s a lot of sadness behind that finger-snap smile. I’m still debating on whether to give her a good ending, or a bitter one. :(  No, that was not a spoiler for the fan-fiction that’ll one day hit this blog.

11) What got you into your favourite activity?(i.e how did you start?) Favorite activity? Like… a hobby?  Well the longest-running hobby I’ve ever had is writing (no guesses there). And it was more-or-less self-taught. As a kid, nobody could take me anywhere without a book in my hand, or some other adventure happening inside my own head (which made it awfully inconvenient to get my attention in a mall… but hey, I never wandered off). And writing short stories was always the most entertaining school assignment for me.  But it wasn’t until I started home-schooling at thirteen that I found the time and need to write something for myself, putting to paper those increasingly-complex sagas and fan-fictions that lived in my head (because my short-term recall just couldn’t keep track of all the dialogue and plot twists anymore; I needed to start recording my stories to make sense of them.)   And I haven’t stopped since. :)

Uh-oh. Here come… my questions. For @mentacomchocolate, @areyntheheartseeker, and @the-irish-hoor​. 

Why did you name your blogs the way you did? ;)

What would your honest personal reaction be if you accidentally stepped into a fairy ring, landed in a strange place, and got threatened by a fox-lady wielding fireballs?  

What’s your dream job in this life?  

Is there anyone you have a crush on that you’re still really embarrassed to admit? Would you like to mention them anyway? ;)  

If there’s only one book genre you could spend the rest of your life reading, what will it be?  

What are the top 5 things you geek out over? (Today, at least. ;) )

If you’ve been given a 24-hour advance warning that the world is definitely going to end (i.e. via Death Star), what will you do?

And if you’ve been given an exclusive two-person escape pod during above scenario, what/who would you bring with you to escape the planet? Would you want to?

If your friends can agree on one thing about you, what would it be? Do you agree with them? 

What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you this past week?  

What do you remember as your most incredible feat of endurance to date? Physical, mental, and/or social?

*looks up* ...All right, those are some weird questions. I won’t blame you at all if you ignore them.