#im thinking too hard about it aren't i

[abluehappyface]

"I checked to make sure she's still alive and she is"

[inkskinned]

she says he won't let her get a dog, which is fine, because they're in an apartment, and that's the kind of thing people say about their partners. he won't let me get a dog. and you're at a dinner party and you tilt your head a little to the side just like that dog he won't let her get, because is this the thing that's going to upset you? you don't know every corner of their relationship, she could be joking, they could have had so many healthy conversations about the dog, right, and maybe she's not letting herself get the dog because of money and time and whatever. but, like, she did say let

and she wants to move away from his hometown and he wants to stay and then he tells you with a wink and a conspiratorial stage whisper don't worry i'll convince her and she laughs about it - so clearly this is something they laugh about. but you do just stand there and stare at him like what the fuck, man. you can't say what you want to say which is why do you get the final say on everything because they're both obviously aware of the other person's stance on this and have obviously had private conversations about it and what are you going to do about it except make a scene and then he'll be mad at you and call you one of those bitches behind your back and she'll cut you off, which is a loss that doesn't feel worth it just because he makes you a little skeeved out every 3rd comment

and they both agree he just isn't the type to get flowers which is fine because everyone shows love differently, and are you really gonna judge someone based on their sense of individual relationship responsibility? maybe he's constantly cleaning her car and writing her poems and making her furniture or something. maybe she doesn't even like flowers and this is perfect, actually. and no you couldn't date him, obviously, ew; but like, she tells you she's happy. you almost send her a tiktok that says don't be 25 and the cool girl that doesn't need anything, you'll hate not getting flowers at 30, but that's like, starting drama & you shouldn't start drama needlessly.

and you're a little older than her but not so much older you can pull the whole trust me on this one babe thing and besides that wouldn't have worked anyway (when does it ever) and besides you have trauma so you and your therapist both agree that you're always looking for a problem even when there isn't one. and you tell yourself that just because you see them for 15 minutes every month does not mean you can identify every single red flag based on a single shitty half-joking(?) comment

and besides, what are you going to do? she says i actually wanted another stand mixer but thankfully he stops me when i'm about to spend too much money and you're standing there like are you okay? is this normal? is this just something people say? and again - what are you going to do?

to your therapist you try to language it - it's not, like, any of my business. but sometimes, doesn't it feel like - you should do something. there's got to be something, right? you've tried dropping little hints but they sail right through and you've tried having a single serious conversation and she got upset because why does it matter to you, yes it's different but we're happy, it doesn't need to make sense to you and you're like. really unwilling to push a boundary about it anymore; because the truth is that you know logically it shouldn't matter to you, as long as both parties are happy.

and besides, you've been wrong before. it's just... like, every time you see them both, something else happens, some kind of shiver down your spine like do you even hear each other when you talk. it's their strange, bickering orbit. just the way he's on his phone through dinner or watching sports instead of helping in the kitchen or, fuck, another one of these little throwaway comments he makes about we'll see about that, babe. she laughs when he calls her passions stupid shit and meanwhile she gets him tickets to see the knicks and he tells you well at least she's smart about something and still! it's none of your business.

you say get the dog anyway and she laughs. like, this is is you being funny. and not you saying - no really. get the dog. get the dog and get out of here. pack up and start running.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

tbh i think that even unwinnable fights should be winnable. some of the BEST fights i've ever run as a dm were ones i built kill the players (in a fun way. I had some cutscenes prepped so even the loss would be a different flavour of win)- but then they were clever bastards and managed to either win the fights or pull themselves out of trouble. I think it's perfectly fine to plan for a fight that players aren't supposed to win, but you need to let them. if they can't win, they can't lose, and the meaning of that encounter is diminished. do that too many times, and they stop trusting you to give them roleplay prompts and start expecting to sit there waiting while you drive the story for them.

but if they can win... if there is always the chance to win, no matter how impossible the odds, then they ALWAYS have hope. they always get invested. they feel the big emotions of success or the big emotions of failure, and you fucking Win as a dm/roleplay prompter/lead bastard.

[corviiids]

THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

[yellowocaballero]

At this point you've written at least four different roleswap AUs, so I was wondering if you had any thoughts or takes about how a roleswap AU should be? - someone who's planning on making a roleswap AU

Please don't remind me. I'm embarrassed about this. I know I need to write other things. I don't know why the AU concept is so incredibly fun to write. I can't explain it. Roleswaps are very easy to write and a lot of fun and involve being a freak about everything. Who wouldn't write 10 of those bitches.

But yes, as someone whose roleswap AUs are like 9 out of her 51 fics, I feel qualified to talk about this. These are just my own opinions and takes, and other people might do it differently - if you write roleswaps too, feel free to add in your two cents!!

Before sitting down to write literally anything I always figure out the rules of the story. Writing is little more than a nonstop series of decisions, and if you abide by the rules of your story or characters then your decisions will be coherent and cohesive. By rules I don't mean worldbuilding - I mean the internal logic of the story and the characters. "X character will never explicitly say how he's feeling" or "the leads have to both win and lose every encounter".

I find establishing writing rules for roleswaps especially important - it's figuring out exactly how the roleswap works. Here are the ones that I find important, and kind of the process:

Decide what is swapped. Is it more of a universal swap, personality swap, backstory swap, chronology swap, or alignment swap? No matter which one you choose, all of these things are probably going to change anyway, but there has to be one central point for each character that guides your decisions. Are you actually swapping the narrative role in the story, or are you just changing it? You have to be really precise and have a very good idea of what exactly is swapped, and it has to be consistent throughout the story. It can't just (just) work on what you'd like to see, it has to be exactly the same between characters.

Decide the point of divergence. Sometimes that point is pretty abstract (She's a teenager in the 90s instead of the 20s). Sometimes it's much more specific, just one moment (He developed his superpowers at this moment instead of that). The point doesn't have to be immediately obvious, but you should know it - I did a backstory swap ages ago, and it seemed like a complete change, but like 150k in I dropped that a character dropped out of the police academy instead of completing it and that her entire life changed from there. If the swap is more abstract, then maybe it's just a series of smaller decisions - character A has these seminal points in his story, and I'm swapping him with character B, so here's what character B did during these seminal points instead, and how it changed him and his narrative.

Decide who the character is. This might be more personal, but for me, I think of the character as...there is a central tenet of them, of who they are as a person, that does not change no matter what. That's three or four traits of who they are, that you will not change, and that's what makes their swapped life their own instead of the OG dude's. But there's a lot of traits and behaviors around that core personality that's the result of their environment, backstory, and experiences. That's what should change. It's about figuring out how these essential traits + what is swapped + the point of divergence = an entirely different character and story. The roleswap you'll end up with will be a combination of all of these things: how the essential aspects of a character mix with what's swapped to create an entirely new environment and set of behaviors, which cause a chain reaction to create something new. As a writer, you sit down and say, "I'm keeping these parts of the character, I'm swapping out those parts, this new mix changes these points in their backstory, this results in this new person".

This is more of a guideline, but it's the most important to me: your characters have to be recognizable as the character. The reader shouldn't go, "this OC is making some weird choices". The reader should go, "I don't know how, because he's the exact opposite of his canon self in every possible way, but somehow he still feels like my favorite character". This is why you isolate those basic traits before changing the rest - so long as your character is still who they are deep inside, then they still feel like that character. And that's the fun of the story. You're selling something insane, and the reader is buying it.

It's a lot of really heavy character work. You have to really understand the characters you're writing - the less I get the original character, the more issues I'm perpetually having. I tend to fly fast and loose with characterizations, but when writing roleswaps I have to refer back to canon and the source material a lot ("In canon he did X thing, with his newly different backstory how would that decision change?"). The more you're rooted in canon, then the funkier and more divergent you can get.

Personally, I like to play a fun little game I call: how exactly opposite can I make this character until he stops feeling like this character? I Sometimes my goal in writing is "how deeply can I ruin this story". This is not a good game and people should not play it. I find that the lazier I get about getting in touch with the canon character, about keeping track of the canon decisions, and about following these guidelines, then the more difficult a story is to write. If you structure a story well then it's easy to write, and roleswaps are pretty easy. Thanks for the question!

[triglycercule]

killer should know about dumb video game meta stuff ike i-frames and animation cancels and critting amd breaking out of bounds and use it to his advantage in fights. maybe he learned it from chara in something new as a silly little thing to try out because theyre already teaching him all this bullshit on killing so whos to say a video game character cant learn a player's cheats?? he's already interacted and collaborated with a player before i think its fair he knows tricks on how to cheat undertale's fighting system

everything's all fine and dandy in a fight against killer (no it isn't) until you see him glitching around and somehow phasing through your attacks. he looks ridiculous but it gets the job done

[todayisafridaynight]

So Allegedly Infinite Wealth is 100 hours... not that you can't already spend that long on the games if you really want to, but I'd say it's the first time that could be said to be the base experience rather than a time only hardcore completionists are likely to get.

Yokoyama was talking at length about wanting to make the game worth the price tag since the team is incredibly conscious about the value of the players' time and money. They essentially feel they owe players ten times what they paid, so they're aiming for "an enjoyable 100 hours, but also an unforgettable 100 hours."

If they pull it off, I personally think it'd be 100% worth it and not just a "well other studios are doing it so we can get away with it too" price hike... I'm at least happy to know that's not the intent, and I'm intrigued to see how everything pans out and what the ratio is between story and side content

oh yayaya i saw that article this morning!!! 100 hours is actually so unfathomable to me in terms of an rgg game- i mean y7 was At Minimum around 45~50 hours but when i think of other RPGS that easily dip into 70's and 100's of hours, i'm not too surprised to see LAD start to climb towards those numbers now. it'd be such a jump in rgg's terms tho, so i'm TRULY curious to see where the nearly doubled gameplay hours comes from..

i really appreciate yoko's respect not just to RGGS but also to its customers: they want to make a great product, but they also don't want to sacrifice what they want to do to do that in the process

[dykeofmisfortune]

being a pretentious fuck is embarassing sometimes. bc if someone asks me what video games i play im like "yeah i only play story based indie games about depression and guilt" like omfg shut UP

[joseigamer]

treehouse censoring even alfred's, kagetsu's, etc romantic lines in elyos after you s-support them....

[altruistic-meme]

if you could... describe aftg in 5 words

oh this is not as easy a question to answer as it should be akfhsdkf bc like. i could describe its plot, or my thoughts on it as a fan, or how it makes me feel, or just make a joke, or or or and bc idk why you're asking it makes it harder :'))

but let's see...

plot: gay sports mafia found family.

fan: drama, familiarity, trauma, comedy, home

feelings: love, understanding, chaos, joy, comfort

joke: you know, i get it-

(as you can see, i couldn't pick which one to go with, so choose whichever 5 words you want lmao)

[skrunksthatwunk]

yakuza: dead souls - american vibes, bigass guns, and why zombies are super weird to have in ryu ga gotoku thematically/ideologically speaking

so i've been playing dead souls recently (hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah) and although i'm having the time of my life with it, there was something about it that kinda felt off to me, and i think i've figured out what it was, but i'm gonna have to walk you through a bit of my thought process to get there.

my first instinct was that it felt... american? and upon further examination i think that boils down to a couple of things:

everyone suddenly has lots of guns and also way way bigger guns

high emphasis on individual heroism (this itself is quite typical for rgg, but it manifests differently here; more on that in a bit)

military/government incompetence, which must be solved by the right individuals having the biggest and bestest guns

[for the sake of transparency i will note that my experience with zombie media is pretty limited and skews american (and i myself am american), so that may create bias. however, the 'this feels american to me' instinct is a rare one for me even in genres where i have seen little/no non-american media, so i think the fact that it did occur to me is notable. what about dead souls triggered that response when little else has? that's why i examined it and, truthfully, i think there's merit in the idea itself.]

the first point is pretty self-explanatory. america's got more guns than it does people, and its gun worship is infamous. japan's ban on guns (aided by its being an island state) means there's far fewer guns in the country, as well as far fewer people with guns (and likely far fewer guns per gun owner, excepting arms dealers/smugglers) than somewhere without such a ban. obviously, there are guns anyway. due to their illegality they are clustered within the criminal population, which explains their presence within organized crime within the series. very few guns will be sitting around in the homes of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

and yet, when the zombie outbreak hits kamurocho, plenty of civilians suddenly have access to quite an arsenal. everyone has the knowledge they need to aim, fire, and reload smoothly and quickly; ammo is infinite for certain guns. characters we've never seen using firearms before suddenly have shotguns under their couches (looking at you, majima). it's not only very different from reality, it's very different from guns' place within the series up until this point, when they were limited weapons used primarily by the enemy.

and they're making a zombie shooter, so of course they would have to do this. it has to be unrealistic to be simultaneously in this setting and in this genre, in the same way that yakuza solving their problems with bareback fistfights instead of guns is itself both unrealistic and necessary to being the kinds of games rgg are.

my point is that this is a kind of focus on and valorization of gun ownership and competency unusual for the series and setting. further, it serves as an argument for why an armed, competent populace is crucial typical in american media.

which brings us to the third point (we'll get to 2 in a minute). guns are often marketed as self-defense weapons. the implication is that the government's defense of the individual (via law enforcement or the military, but particularly the former), are insufficient. this is objectively true. if someone pulls a gun on you at the gas station, will a cop manifest out of thin air to intercede? no. that's impossible. but if you have a gun, or if some bystander has a gun, you or they may be able to do something with that gun to stop the armed person. thus, there is an undeniable gap in the effective immediacy of such responses.

many gun advocates also point to the incompetence or insufficiency of law enforcement, even when they are present to stop an armed aggressor. the fact that law enforcement do not have a 100% success rate in protecting the citizenry is also objectively true.

so, when you are in danger, arming yourself increases your chances of being able to put down (or at least take armed action against) a present or potential threat. whether it is viewed it as a supplement to or a replacement for law enforcement, it is meant to make up for the shortcomings of the government's ability to completely protect all its citizens. it's a safety net for state failure.

back to dead souls. rgg has always centered political corruption in its stories, including politicians, the police, and sometimes even the military, though usually the former two. sometimes this is treated sympathetically (i.e. tanimura, a dirty cop, whose dirty-cop-ness allows him to work outside/against the law to help disadvantaged people, not unlike how kiryu views being a yakuza), and other times it's simply a matter of greed or lust for power (i.e. jingu).

however, something that's almost never touched on so clearly is government incompetence. when the government fails to help people or hurts them or does corrupt things, it's usually due to a competent, malicious bad apple who is removed from power by the end of the game. this implies holes in the system because it keeps happening all the time, but that's on a series-wide scale, a pattern ignored by the series in favor of the individual game solution of "this guy's gone now :) yay".

but in dead souls, the SDF's barracades fall, their men are killed, they are unable to help protect the people outside or inside the quarantine zone. they are weak in a way the government usually isn't in these games. and who is stronger than them? our individual good guys with guns. so we need to be armed because the government is weak and can't protect us. boom. america.

returning to point 2, i'd like to say that dead souls is not particularly more individualistic than any of the other games in the series (other than, perhaps, y7). rgg is an incredibly individualistic series, actually. its protagonists are usually men who defy, oppose, and skirt around the law as a way of helping others and doing what is truly right (with a few exceptions, like shinada and haruka). the romanticized view of the yakuza as a force for helping the community in the face of government incompetence is a real one, and one that tends to manifest itself most in kiryu and how the series treats him. it shows us yakuza who aren't willing to kill, yakuza who cry about honor and justice and humanity and brotherhood, yakuza who never dip their hands into less palatable crimes, or only do with intense regret (and only ever as part of their backstory). the beat-em-up style emphasizes this as well. i mean, what's more individualistic than a one-man army?

put more clearly, this series is about men defying legal and social laws and expectations to live in a way that feels right to them, and about making themselves strong enough to combat those who would get in their way. the individual is placed before the society in importance, (though generally in a way that benefits the community, because they are good guys who want to use that agency and power for good).

all of this is true in dead souls as well, technically. those who live on the outskirts of society are the ones who actually save the day, and the ones who go in there and save people rather than just walling them off and pretending like they don't exist. they have the guns, which are illegal and mark them as criminals, but this broken law is what gives them the power to save themselves when the government will not, and to save their community if they so choose.

where dead souls differs is in the nature of that strength.

rgg places a lot of emphasis on self-improvement, both of one's body and of one's character. do both of these, and you will be strong enough to back up your ambitions. what allows someone to carve their own path in life is the ability to put down ideological and physical resistance by having resolve and the ability to tiger drop whoever won't be swayed by your impassioned speeches. you make yourself a weapon. you make yourself strong. in dead souls, that strength comes from an external, material possession. strength is something you buy (or that you take from someone else). who is able to survive the apocalypse comes not from the heart, nor from rigorous training, but from who has the most, the biggest, and the most bestest guns. it's an intersection of capitalism, militarization, and individualism. simply, deeply american.

[when i was talking myself through this a few days ago, i spent a lot more time on the capitalism + individualism stuff, but i think i'll keep this moving. consider this aside the intermission]

dead souls also differs for a few other interlocking reasons. it can be described with this equation:

zombification of enemies + lethality of guns = loss of emphasis on redemption

if your best friend turned into a zombie, could you shoot them? or your child? or your lover? it's a common trope, but it's a damn good one. watching your family, your neighbors, your town, everyone turn into a husk of themselves, something that looks like them but cannot be reached, is deeply tragic. it's even more tragic when these husks are trying to kill you. unable to be reasoned with and unable to be cured, you must incapacitate them before someone innocent is hurt--or hurt, then themselves made dangerous; each loss adds to the number of threats surrounding you. your life is seen as more valuable than that of your zombified friend, not only because the zombie is attacking you and it's self defense, but because they are no longer a person to you. to be a zombie is to no longer be human; zombification is dehumanization.

and so in a series so focused on connection with one's community, on saving innocent civilians, often on saving kamurocho specifically, one would expect similar tropes to occur. even if one's friends aren't turned, perhaps the cashier at poppo you chat with sometimes is. it's the destruction of that community and of the members one has tertiary relationships with that i expect would occur most within a kamurocho zombie story, since they are likely unwilling to axe anyone more important than that, even if dead souls isn't canon. i'd especially expect to see that in the beginning, before the need to kill zombies rather than contain or redeem them becomes apparent.

this does not happen.

i cannot speak for the entire game, but i can speak of gameplay choices that affect this, and ones i think will not be subverted throughout, even if they are somewhat contradicted by plot events i am presently unaware of.

kamurocho is not a community to protect, nor is it filled with your fellows. it is a playground filled with infinitely respawning, infinitely mow-downable, infinitely disposable zombies. you are meant and encouraged to kill them by the thousands, and never to hesitate or consider whether they may be cured or who may be mourning them. who may be unable to identify their loved one because you were trying to reach a headshot goal from hasegawa. you are not meant to consider them as human, nor beings that were once human, nor beings that could be human again, in the eyes of the zombie shooter. they are merely bodies, targets, and obstacles.

the zombies are contrasted with the true humans, those barricading themselves within the quarantine zone or those living in ignorance outside it. humans are meant to be saved, zombies are meant to be killed. the player character is the only one who can truly help with either of these goals, because the other humans are cowardly, ignorant, or unarmed/helpless. you must be their savior. to be a savior is to eliminate zombies, who are less than human.

the black and white nature of this is also emphasized by another gameplay characteristic: the lack of street encounters. when you traverse the peaceful parts of kamurocho, you are never attacked. you are also never directly attacked by the humans within the quarantine zone. kamurocho feels very different without its muggers and hooligans, but it's because this is a zombie shooter, not a beat-em-up. in a normal rgg title, you'd subdue threats by punching, kicking, and throwing them. you'd use your body in (supposedly) nonlethal ways. dead souls does not have a combat system meant for civilians. you have your guns. you subdue threats by shooting them, preferably lethally. the game doesn't want you to do that to humans, so you never fight humans. this furthers the black and white divide between the salvation-worthy, noble humans and the death-worthy, worthless zombies. combat is only lethal, and only used against the inherent other.

this leads me to the part of dead souls i find most conflicting with the ethos of rgg broadly, and perhaps its greatest ideological/thematic failing.

because the enemy are incurable, dangerous, and inhuman, you must kill them to protect yourself and others, others who are still human. humanity is something that is lost or preserved, but never regained. once someone's gone, they're gone, and you not only must kill them, it is your duty and your right to kill them. you should kill them.

in dead souls, there is no redeeming the enemy.

and that's a big problem.

rgg is about a lot of things, but a key one is the ability of people to change for the better. its most memorable, beloved villains are those who see the light by the end and change their wicked ways (usually through some form of redemptive suicide, though that's another essay in itself). its pantheon of characters is full of those who come from questionable backgrounds struggling to be the best people they can be, to live as themselves authentically and compassionately. it's about the good and the love you can find in the moral and legal gray zones of life/society, and the potential/capacity for good all of us have, no matter how far we may have fallen. it is a hopeful series. it is a merciful series.

this is something bolstered by its gameplay. countless substories are resolved by punching a lesson into someone until they improve their behavior, either out of fear or genuine remorse/development. the games don't just discourage killing your enemies, they don't allow you to (yes, we've all seen the "kiryu hasn't killed anybody? umm. look at this heat action" stuff before, and while they've got a point, i believe it's the narrative's intent that none of this is actually lethal, based on how laxly it treats certain plot injuries (cough cough. y7 bartender) and the actual concept of taking a life, the gravity it is given by the text, particularly when it comes to characters crossing that threshold into someone who has killed. explicit killing is not an option open to you, even when you're being attacked by dozens and dozens of armed men. conflicts are resolved by simply beating up enough guys in this nonlethal manner.

but dead souls is a shooter. to avoid conflict with the series' moral qualms about letting its characters kill, the enemies cannot be human. furthermore, the zombie shooter genre can only fit within the series if its zombies are completely inhuman. this means their pasts as humans cannot be acknowledged, nor the possibility of a cure, nor the characters' own potential conflicts about killing them; or, at least, not in a way that impedes their or the player's ability to gun them down afterwards.

if you can't kill humans in your series, then it cannot be possible to save (in this case, rehumanize) zombies. this is especially true in a game where you are unable to fight humans, and thus human lives are universally more valuable than zombie lives. because if you kill a zombie that can be cured, you are, in a way, killing a human.

and so, in a series where you should always assume your enemies (and everyone, for that matter) are capable of reason, compassion, change, and redemption, and where they are always worth that effort, even if they reject it in the end, dead souls' enemies are irredeemable and only worth swift, stylish slaughter. there are only good guys and bad guys. good guys must be protected, lest they be turned irreversibly into bad guys. good guys are only protected by killing bad guys, and the only way to save good guys is to kill every last one of the bad guys. do not spare them, and do not ask whether or not it's right. only kill.

i love dead souls. it's a silly game. i like seeing daigo in decoy-drag and majima gleefully cartwheeling his way through zombies and ryuji with his giant gun arm prosthetic. it's fun. but when i was trying to figure out what felt off about it to me, one of the words that came to mind (besides american) was indulgent. that, too, felt odd, because i love indulgent media. i am not one to scorn decadent, hedonistic, beautiful high-calorie slop type media. if dead souls was just fan servicey, that wouldn't really bother me. i am a fan and boy do i feel serviced. it rocks. but i think my problem is in what dead souls is indulging.

i think dead souls indulges in the desire to cut loose, and to see these characters cut loose. thing is, they're cutting loose all over kamurocho, and all over the bodies of people they used to (at least in concept) care for. with lethal weapons. it is catharsis via bloodbath, not by pushing your body and mind to the limit in man to man combat, but by pulling a trigger before the other guy can hurt you, or even think about hurting you, for the crime of existing as the wrong kind of thing.

and i just don't think that's in line with rgg's beliefs.

yes, it's probably fair for dead souls' characters to kill zombies. i'm not against that. i'm also not against games letting you do purposeless violence. i spent a good amount of my elementary school years killing oblivion npcs for shits, like. that's not what bothers me about dead souls.

rgg as a series has always taken a hard stance in both its game design and narrative choices against killing and for the potential for redemption in its enemies. and i think the lengths to which it goes to promote that despite the probably-lethal moves you do and the improbability of a harmless do-gooder yakuza is one of the most endearing things about the games. so for this one entry to disregard that key theme for the sake of a genre shift that flopped super hard, well? i dunno. it feels weird i guess. it's out of place not just because it's a dramatic shift in gameplay and style and also zombies are only a thing here (and the supernatural/fantastical are thus only prominent here), but because of what those shifts imply.

so, uh. yeah. my pre-dead-souls thoughts that dead souls wasn't that out of pocket bc rgg's just kinda weird? turns out it was actually super weird to have a zombie shooter in there, but for way way deeper reasons than anyone gives it credit for.

(footnotes in tags)

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

i'm kind of amazed how most of the stardew marriage candidates just want you to be their manic pixie dream whatever by agreeing with everything they like and plying them with compliments or praise or whatever (which is fine but a bit. Much) but for shane his romance is just you being there for him while he figures his own shit out... dunno why i never wanted to romance him before he's so good

[ultramarine-spirit]

heyyy Not sure if any of you have said this before but I just found out that Athy's palace when she was born, the one where Diana died and it was the palace of the concubines is very similar to Moritzburg castle and I think Athy's Emerald palace looks like the winter palace but I'm not too sure.

Moritzburg Castle and WMMAP's Ruby Palace

I can definitely see the resemblance between the Ruby Palace and Moritzburg Castle! The colors are almost the same (red roofs, yellow walls with white accents). They also have very similar round towers.

Winter Palace and WMMAP's Imperial (?) Palace. Could be the Garnet Palace.

As for the Winter Palace, I think it looks more similar to the Imperial (?) Palace than the Emerald Palace, even if the colors are closer to the later's. The roofs are very similar, as well as the vaguely Greco-Roman columns. Both palaces are very long, and have what seems to be two floors (it's hard to tell when we don't have a good picture of the Imperial Palace), and multiple rows of windows.

While we are talking about this, it seems like a good chance to talk about all the palaces, because... there are a lot. There are five (or six?) palaces in Obelia:

Imperial Palace. The novel says that "all the palaces in the Imperial Palace were Claude's", so perhaps this is just the sum of all palaces. But the one shown above and below looks different from the minimalist Garnet Palace, so I think it's a different building.

Imperial palace?

Garnet Palace. Where Claude lives and meets Athy for the first time. Athy notes that "it's a palace more humble than Ruby Palace" and is surprised that the emperor is using it (that's why I think it's different from where the debutante and the meetings with the nobles take place). According to the novel, Claude's birthday ball takes place here, but the manhwa uses the same ballroom as the debutante.

All these are shown as being Claude's residence/the Garnet Palace.

Emerald Palace. Where obelian princesses live. Athy's residence gifted to her by Claude.

Emerald Palace.

Bonus: Athy's private library that Claude ordered to be build for her.

Ruby Palace. The palace for the emperor's concubines. Where Diana lived and Athy was born. A garden connects it to the Garnet Palace.

Topaz Palace. "A place without any use located in the northwestern area". A forbidden place, though Chief Grandpa says "the area was considered forbidden only to the earlier generations of emperors". This is where Athy finds the book that transports her to the LP dimension.

Sapphire Palace. Where important guests and ambassadors stay. This is where Athy sits on top of an angel statue and Cabel mistakes her for a fairy.

In the manhwa we only see the Ruby Palace, the Garnet Palace, the Emerald Palace, and maybe the Imperial Palace? Again, unclear if it's a different palace altogether, though it is mentioned in the novel.

[euclydya]

being in control has been fun but can someone else take the reigns now

[chaoticgremlinbrainspace]

was going insane at a friend last night now I need to research transness in the 70s and all that fun stuff so I can be fully unhinged and maybe actually write smth for once instead of being haunted by visions

[clumsycapitolunicorn]

I'm free. Worst experience (the finale) of my life.