0065 | in which two Shall We Date? games make me respectively frustrated/gleeful and suspicious

► An update on the transcribing process for the Lovesickness Event in Shall We Date? The Nilfheim:

• J.J.: 100%
• Orlando: 100%, as of last night
• Jean: Currently stuck at the third Grace Point Checkpoint. I think I can probably get past this one (as of right now, I only need 1370 more grace points to pass it), but I highly doubt that I'll be able to pass the final checkpoint, since there are only seven hours left in the event. I can probably finish up the missing text from the diverging choices, but I don't think I'll be able to get the text for the Normal Ending. =/

► Now on to more positive things! Despite my above complaints, this transcribing project has actually yielded quite a bit of fruit for me in various ways. I ended up reading the text much more closely than I usually do and that, combined with the fact that I actually reread the side-stories instead of fast-forwarding through them the second time around, meant that I found myself picking up on quite a few small things that I hadn't noticed before and that I also promptly found myself saddled with more fic bunnies, whoops.

There's also a few details about the world of Nilfheim itself that I hadn't known before this event, some of which I missed during my first time through the event. The fact that people cannot become physically ill in Nilfheim— which actually makes quite a bit of sense, considering that they're all already dead— was the obvious one I carried away from my first playthrough, but there were some other details that I missed. The largest one that comes to mind is the fact that Nilfheim doesn't have a sun. In hindsight, this... probably should have been obvious, since every scene I have ever seen looks like it takes place at night / under moonlight, but somehow I'd completely missed that. And now the whole thing about Isabella being the "sun" of Nilfheim makes much more sense oh God I am an idiot for just realizing this now.

I'm not sure if the existence of another realm— Muspelheim— and its ruler, King Leo, was something that was revealed in Jean's Main Route, since I haven't played that one yet, but that was also new information for me. I really want to know more about it now, since I didn't realize that there were any other realms other than Nilfheim.

Finally, transcribing this event really hammered in how ridiculous the writing for this game could be. I mean, I always realized that it wasn't exactly great literature, but typing up some of these lines was definitely cause for amusement.
( cut for examples )

...I think they speak for themselves.

► Speaking of the Shall We Date? series... While The Nilfheim is the one which I'm the most fannish about, I do play some of the other games in the series. I bring this up because I've been playing through Elias' route— my first route— in Shall We Date? Wizardess. I'm on Chapter 10, and the conversation between Liz and Professor Merkulova in that chapter fired up quite a few dormant thoughts/suspicions that I'd been having, which I really needed to share with someone. ( cut for spoilers )

Of course, it's always possible that 1) the game is really not going to be that complex or 2) that it expects you to suspect that and will make it turn out differently, but for now, I definitely think that that's what's going to happen.