122 | Mystic Messenger, Chocolate Box Authors Reveal, a Fire Emblem: Awakening replay, & Wolf's Rain

[straightforwardly]

► Still making my way through all of Yoosung’s Endings in Mystic Messenger. Since my last update, I’ve gotten Bad Ending 01, Bad Ending 02, and the Normal Ending.

Honestly, the run-up to Bad Ending 01 was… the closest I’ve ever gotten to genuinely shipping Yoosung/MC? I loved the “I will become Rika if that’s what he wants” and the “I’m all that he needs” and how delightfully subby Yoosung got. It’s a pity they ended up both being blown up, because I was already ready for all the post-bad ending fic.

Also, Yoosung projecting Rika on the MC like that did nothing to convince me that he was telling the truth about not having feelings for Rika.

Honestly, after that, when Yoosung called the MC to the park in Bad Ending 02, I… expected Yoosung to snap again? Especially after Jumin specifically got worried about them meeting in such an out-of-the-way location so late at night. I wasn’t too crazy about his “let’s run away and leave the RFA” plan, so I was pleased when Unknown showed up with more craziness.

I actually planned to do Bad Ending 3 next, but after making a bit of a mistake that I won’t go into, I ended up going for the Normal Ending instead. Pros: we got that hospital visit I was teased with in the Good Ending! Cons: ….Eh, too much Yoosung/MC. I mean. It is his route, so I can’t really complain, but it also meant that it didn’t do too much for me, since I apparently only ship it when Yoosung’s losing his grip on reality.

► It’s… already been a few days since Chocolate Box authors were revealed, haha, but I wanted to share what I wrote! I wrote a few fics, but nothing longer than 1K. For Harry Potter, I wrote a Lucius/Narcissa fic and a Tom/Ginny, pre-Harry/Ginny fic. The former was my assignment. I also wrote Emma Woodhouse/Harriet Smith for Jane Austen’s Emma and Lucina/Severa for Fire Emblem: Awakening. (In unrelated news, I now have a new FE:A ship. :P)

► Speaking of which… between writing Fire Emblem: Awakening fic for Chocolate Box and receiving it, I got struck by the urge to replay the game. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’ve just finished Chapter 14.

First thing’s first: I actually recruited Gaius this time instead of accidentally killing him! And, omg, I have so many regrets about not having him the first time around. He is a delight. ♥ He also screwed up some of my relationship plans, because, uh, I kind of started shipping him/Lissa before I even got their first support? And then their supports were a delight (especially the A-support), and that is the story of how I married Gaius and Lissa to one another.

I wanted to do all different relationships this time around for theater-filling purposes, and actually made a spreadsheet to track all of my decisions.

I should mention that, as of right now, I haven’t recruited any of the child characters (except for, of course, Lucina), so I have no thoughts on their relationships with their new parents. (Except that I miss Robin and Lucina’s mother-daughter relationship. :( Lucina being convinced that Robin is going to steal Chrom from Maribelle at any moment isn’t nearly as fun.)

Here’s the marriages I’ve ended up with/am working towards:

Virion/f!Robin - tbh, this was at least 45% of the reason for this playthrough. I loved Chrom/f!Robin, but I ended up shipping these two pretty hard as well, and I wanted a universe where she ended up with him instead of Chrom. So here we are! ♥

Chrom/Maribelle - I… really don’t like any of Chrom’s non-Robin marriage options, ahaha. So I married him off to Maribelle and headcanoned it as being a political match.

(I also actually ended up writing a short fic about that, though it needs editing before it’s posted.)

Gaius/Lissa - See my above commentary! :D

Kellam/Sully - This decision was made 100% because of Kjelle. It would just make so much sense for her to be Kellam’s daughter!

Vaike/Miriel - This one was made as a bit of a whim. Originally, I wasn’t sure about who I was going to marry Lissa off to, but I’d narrowed it down to three choices, of which Vaike was one. But… idk, I just like his and Miriel’s dynamic? Which, I can’t say that about too many of Miriel’s marriage options, and I needed to narrow Lissa’s options down to one anyways. So I paired them up, and it was cute. No regrets.

Frederick/Sumia - This was one of the first decisions I made, because I was definitely not going to accidentally marry off all of Sumia’s options before she has the chance again. I want to meet her kid! Like with Chrom, I don’t like too many of Sumia’s options, but Frederick was a clear winner for me. So cute.

Tharja/Libra - I love this pairing. It’s just as good as Tharja/Henry was, albeit in a different way. They have such an excellent dynamic. I’m only at the A-rank support, though.

Cordelia/Gregor - This is the last of the pairings that I actually have married at this point. I… didn’t really have a particular reason for pairing them up? Their dynamic worked well-enough for me, so I went for it. Which is pretty similar to how I decided on Stahl/Cordelia in my last playthrough, haha.

I originally planned for my Olivia match to be Lon’qu/Olivia, but I think I might end up doing Henry/Olivia instead, if only because I realized that I didn’t really have anyone I really liked for Panne, and I do find Lon’qu/Panne kind of cute. Plus, I’d feel bad about throwing Henry away on one of the characters I don’t like as much, considering how much I love him.

I was also going to do Stahl/Nowi, because the number of pairings that don’t squick me for her are very low, and Stahl is the kind of blandly nice character that works well with everyone. But then I realized that I’d only had characters I didn’t like very much for Cherche, and, well, I thought she deserved better than that. So I’m probably going for Stahl/Cherche and Donnel/Nowi instead.

...That was a lot of rambling about things that probably no one but me will care about. But that’s okay, because I know at least my future self will be happy about it

►My big brother and I have started watching Wolf’s Rain together! God, it’s been ages since I’ve watched this anime— well over a decade, I think. We never finished it— we only knew it through renting a disc or two from Hastings. (I remember it as being only one volume— the first one. My big brother remembers watching the first two volumes. He has the better memory, so I’m tempted to defer to him.)

Speaking of which, I’d forgotten… pretty much everything about it? I remembered that the main characters were wolves, and that their human forms were illusions, and I had very clear memories of them standing on those pipes in the first city talking to one another, and a few bits of memory about how Kiba was re: Cheza, but that was about it. I’d even forgotten about some of the main characters! Kiba and Tsume I remembered pretty decently, but Hige and Toboe kind of blended together for me— I remembered there was a character who was the “youngest”, and I kind of remembered Hige’s character design, so when he showed up I went, “oh, he must be the youngest.”

One thing that strikes me: I remember when I was a kid, I was very focused on the “ooo, pretty boys!” bit, but now I’m very much focused on the fact that they’re wolves and that the human form is just an illusion. I just find it such an interesting concept? And I love the moments where it shows what’s happening underneath the illusion so much. ♥

We just finished up episode 8 tonight, and I’m cautiously intrigued by where this is all going. Post-apocalyptic futures with wolves, yess. ♥