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totori just gives you a huge menu of goals and then turns you loose for 3 years rather than breaking it up into terms, then gives you some structured goals towards the end that fit into the story. I'm finding it to be a much better game than Rorona, the writing is better, Totori is a better MC with a better dub VA, it's not stupidly easy, and it doesn't have a really slow first year like Rorona since you can progress at your own pace.
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:43 |
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lulua's father is cordelia
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Endorph posted:lulua's father is cordelia Alchemy can do some amazing things.
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cheetah7071 posted:Firis livepost: Sophie taught me how to craft and this system seems really interesting. The lines system seems better than L&S' zodiac sign nonsense and this really rewards thinking about the order you place items in. I'm looking forward to trying to do difficult projects in this system. Does it still have that design from Sophie where if you put one component in and it overlaps even a little bit with another component, than that old component is totally erased Because that sounds really annoying to plan around
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Endorph posted:lulua's father is cordelia I still think homunculus is fairly likely.
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jokes aside yeah id put money on lulua being a homunculus which im honestly fine with, because atelier rorona is a thing i played like a decade ago that made me go 'i like when video game characters are gay' even if ostensibly the cordelia isnt explicitly a lesbian ending or anything, its pretty obvious that they were intentionally playing that up. so giving rorona a male partner wouldnt be like, the end of the world or anything, but it wouldnt be my preference.
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Greyarc posted:Finished Rorona recently. Really sweet game, enjoyed it a lot except the drinking/groping cutscenes, which were out of place and weird. Also Esty is good and doesn't deserve to be the butt of a translator's joke. Sterk as the dad would own. But I feel she'd have a "scary face" if so. But this is GUST. No text only subtext. I legit doubt anyone is officially together in this.
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Man an Atelier game with a serious/elegant/scary looking protagonist who is secretly an adorable moron is something they should do. Give us an otome villainess alchemist you cowards.
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My money is super advanced homunculus. Rorona always felt like the most skilled of the Arland trilogy and it would totally be up her alley to accidentally make one
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Does it still have that design from Sophie where if you put one component in and it overlaps even a little bit with another component, than that old component is totally erased Yes Endorph posted:jokes aside yeah id put money on lulua being a homunculus The way I read it, Cordelia was definitely lesbian and into Rorona, and Rorona was a late bloomer who hadn't moved beyond "that person is kinda cute, for their gender", and by Totori she was acting as a teacher and not showing her romantic interests to Totori. And then in Meruru, Astrid hosed her up real good So I think just about any origin for Lulua fits with canon but I can almost guarantee based on the way this series is written that it will neither confirm nor sink any ships. My money is on Lulua is either created with alchemy or adopted.
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A Sometimes Food posted:Man an Atelier game with a serious/elegant/scary looking protagonist who is secretly an adorable moron is something they should do. His NAME is Logix Ficsario
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cheetah7071 posted:Yes I really do wish they'd make some of the more obvious (Mimi and Totori springs to mind) or amusing (Sterk x Rorona. Or Sterk anyone really. Sterk as a husband and father is pure comedic gold) ones canon. But I agree. No text. All the kids will be adopted or maybe in Lulua's case homunculi. Gio might have a biological kid I suppose. Kinda doubt we'll see the mother even then though. It'll just be implied to maybe be Esty, Astrid or the handsy general store lady. Maybe. Also Cordy is bi as hell, she is thirsty for Rorona, Sterk, Gio, Esty and Lionela at points.
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poop Also Lulua is one thing but who does everyone think Gio had Christoph with ??? years after the end of Meruru
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:poop Astrid, duh
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corn in the bible posted:Astrid, duh IMO Tired: Sterk x Rorona Wired: Gio x Sterk
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Didn't realize the series was so much about subtext over text. Normally that'd be whatever, but the game's all about personal relationships, so not letting Cordelia have a girlfriend or whatever later on just seems sad. I hope the kid is Rorona's and isn't a homonculus, just because following Rorona from teen to adult to mom with teen kid would be badass and still pretty unprecedented for a video game protagonist, let alone a female one. Moms are tough but not tough enough to avoid getting fridged without character development all the time A Sometimes Food posted:Also Cordy is bi as hell, she is thirsty for Rorona, Sterk, Gio, Esty and Lionela at points.
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I mean does it matter if it's her biological kid or not if she's still calling her her daughter and treating her as such. Like single mothers adopting kids or getting artifically impregnated are things that happen.
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Most of the time I'd say no, it doesn't matter. The reason I think it'd be neat in this case is because there's a precedent of biological moms getting the shortest end of the stick when it comes to stories. I can think of some examples of adoptive moms shown as heroes, but almost no biological moms come to mind without it ending with their tragic death. Relatedly, there's also the trend that female characters need to be seen as pure, which historically meant they had to keep single, with the only other legitimate relationship option being to pair up with a player stand-in. Rorona ending up in an adult relationship with an NPC and having a kid with them would buck that trend, essentially allowing Rorona to grow up instead of being kept as a pure child-waifu for the player -- something Rorona in particular has had historical trouble with from what I've heard of her role in... Meruru? Whichever turns her back into a literal child. None of this is meant as a slight against gay relationships or adopting -- those are separate, worthy issues in their own right and unrelated in the context I'm thinking of. This is only about the fact that moms are tough is a joke because of how well it sums up the way most non-waifu women are treated in games, and how this seems like a nice opportunity to show a counterexample. Edit: grammar Greyarc fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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i didn't care before but now im hoping she's adopted just to spite you
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U-DO Burger posted:i didn't care before but now im hoping she's adopted just to spite you I... What? These are loaded topics we're talking about, yeah, but I genuinely don't get where this hostility is coming from. I've already said this isn't about being anti-adoption, at all.
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rorona already has weird mom energy in Totori
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Rorona married her cauldron
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I'm gonna really miss Julie Maddalena's dub Rorona. I'm sure the JP voices are fine too but I can picture her weird mom energy dialed up to 10 effortlessly
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Greyarc posted:I... What? sorry, that was way more venomous than i meant it to be that said your complaints about moms getting shafted in fiction aren't really relevant to the Arland series because Totori's mom is a total badass adventurer and is not dead
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U-DO Burger posted:sorry, that was way more venomous than i meant it to be ![]() Also, glad to hear that about Totori's mom! She was mentioned in the opening as being an adventurer that went missing, but that's as far as I've gotten. It's already a nice step up from usual to have Totori following in her mom's footsteps.
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Greyarc posted:Most of the time I'd say no, it doesn't matter. The reason I think it'd be neat in this case is because there's a precedent of biological moms getting the shortest end of the stick when it comes to stories. I can think of some examples of adoptive moms shown as heroes, but almost no biological moms come to mind without it ending with their tragic death. And the 'non-waifu women' thing is weird because Atelier's fanbase is like 75% women and the atelier series has plenty of decently written adult women. Rorona in this game should be written as a character that the people who played atelier rorona when they were in their late teens and are now adults can relate to, and I feel like pinning all that relation on 'and she hosed a dude' is kind of wrongheaded. Especially in the context of it being a Japanese game, where one of the main political issues of the day is ruling government party pretty much explicitly saying that adult women who haven't had biological children are failing society. Wouldn't it be nice for adult women in that kind of political climate to have a character from their teenage years who also didn't have a biological child but had an adopted child and was very happy with her, and had grown and matured without being subsumed entirely into the role of 'mother?' Obviously the Atelier series didn't get women the right to vote or anythting but I feel like you're coming at this with a lot of preconceived notions that are only somewhat applicable. Like, the contradiction's even obvious in your post. You say that the series has had issues with making Rorona into a child even when she should be an adult, as shown by the Meruru de-aging thing, but the thing is everyone hated that so much that they had to add in a completely new ending in Meruru's vita port, it had a noticeable impact on sales of future games, and that they're making this game as basically a long awaited apology for that decision. The fanbase doesn't want Rorona to be treated like a child. They want to see her as a cool adult. Rorona being a cool adult isn't predicated on whether or not she gave biological birth to her daughter. Endorph fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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Endorph posted:I understand where you're coming from but saying 'this character needs to be explicitly paired with a man in order to not come across as a child' is some uhhh, bad mojo. Like, again, obviously that wasn't your intent and this is an extremely uncharitable read but, if Rorona's written like an actual mother - not completely sapped of her personality or anything, just more competent and mature and an actual authority figure for her daughter, even if she still has all her goofy pie traits - then she wouldn't be written like a child. The people who don't want Rorona to have an explicit pairing are people who know their preferred pairings for her wouldn't get confirmed, either because they're gay (Cordelia) or because the character's completely fallen off the face of the earth due to their unpopularity (Tantris), which is a pretty different angle than the 'player self-insert' thing you're pushing. I definitely didn't mean to imply Rorona needed to be straight and married with a child to be an adult, though I realize my argument could be seen that way given a different context than intended. My previous statements were made focusing almost solely on general storytelling tropes rather than societal standards, so I was coming into the discussion hauling a whole different load of baggage. The way I was thinking it, having Rorona be a biological mother still running her alchemy business and being rabid about pies while her kid was running around would be a subversion of having a woman's role reduced to Mother after childbirth. For Rorona, the whole kid and kid's father thing wouldn't subsume her old self, but just be added to the rest of her personality. It would be a positive example for women who want to have both kids and a life outside of said kids. The focus on the father and the importance of Rorona being with a guy was, in my view, not really relevant (despite me starting out talking about who she dated -- I was asking for fun, not because it's actually important). In regards to Atelier, it is coming from a better place than most media since it's largely by women for women, but while looking up Rorona stuff I'd heard a lot about how the Arland trilogy was pandering to the otaku market more than before, especially with the de-aged Rorona bit. That de-aging idea matched up with a cultural stigma I was already familiar with, of men obsessed with the purity of women and treating non-virgin women as terrible or unworthy of note. I'll admit a big part of the reason I thought Rorona being an older biological mom would be neat was because it'd be a swing in the exact opposite direction from that. I can't speak to character popularity or other fandom things because I'm not very familiar with the topic, so if I made some wrong assumptions, that was probably me being unaware of something. I think your points are valid and agree with your views on cultural problems. So far as I can tell we're just taking two really different approaches to the subject. In the end I completely agree with your final sentence about Rorona being a biological parent or not. I'm fine with Rorona either way; I was chatting about the subject with a tone of "hey, this would be neat", not "this is the only good way to do this". Greyarc fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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I mean, the main thing I'm not getting is the tie into the 'biological' stuff, as if you're more or less of a mother based on that.
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Endorph posted:I mean, the main thing I'm not getting is the tie into the 'biological' stuff, as if you're more or less of a mother based on that. It's tied to two things which I already mentioned: First, the notion of purity of women, which... I'm not sure whether it's an issue in Japan, but it's got a long history in certain areas of Western culture. Basically, certain subcultures would essentially only consider Rorona worthwhile if she stayed an innocent virgin. Rorona could subvert that simply by being onscreen, doing things and having opinions and not simply fading into the background. Since this is very tied to experience with these Western subcultures, I definitely don't expect it to take precedence over Japanese cultural issues in a Japanese game. Second and more relevant, biological moms in particular have an abysmal track record in fiction. Adoptive moms are more likely to survive and be seen as scrappy can-do types, while biological moms are usually just there to die and be an inspiration for their surviving kids/husband. Rorona could subvert that by not dying and having goals of her own. Anyway, again, I don't have super strong feelings on the subject either way. I'm mainly just writing all this out because I worried my initial statements were overly flippant considering how sensitive the subject matter is for a lot of people.
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I honestly can't remember a lot of games where adoptive moms who are, explicitly adoptive? are treated like that. and I can think of plenty of JRPGs where biological moms are treated fine. Iunno, it seems weird to take the tact that adoptive moms somehow get preferential treatment over biological moms. Again, especially in Japan, where biological birth gets weirdly fetishized and put on a pedestal by conservative politicians. I'm not saying you're like, a bad person for thinking this way or anything, but you're treading into really, really dangerous waters here, and coming at it from the angle of 'progressiveness' doesn't change that it's extremely bad to act like heterosexual relations and biological birth are better, uh, basically ever, in any way, even in relation to how an anime character got a child.
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I get the impression you're attaching a subtext to my statements when in reality, that subtext just isn't there. Again, I feel like we're coming at this from really different backgrounds even though I think we both fundamentally agree with each other on this whole thing. Like, I'm not exaggerating when I say I agree with you on all your cultural opinions. I never, ever intended to imply that straight relationships or biological birth were better. My absolute only reasons for bringing up the whole thing are the two reasons I just mentioned. We obviously have come into contact with pretty different media, but from my perspective, reason number two is laughably blatant.
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I mean, you aren't the person who gets to decide what subtext is in the things you say? I doubt the people in the media you're citing ever intended to say adopted mothers were somehow better than biological mothers, if anything the reason biological mothers might die tragically is that they 'matter' more, but you still read that subtext into it, and you weren't wrong to do so if that was the trend you noticed in stuff you watched/read/played. Subtext is subtext because it's unstated and often unintentional. And I don't think we fundamentally agree with each other, because talking to you has gone from me having a neutral position on it to me thinking that Rorona just having Lulua with a dude would suck? Not out of spite for you, but because you made me think about that possibility more and I decided I hated it a lot.
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Honestly you just seem to want to be antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic. I told you my opinions and you've refused to believe me. You also seem to refuse to believe a different background would cause misunderstandings despite shared ideals. Imposing subtext on another person's words is normal, but you're obviously throwing so much subtext into my posts you're arguing with a shadow, not me. I'm genuinely sorry my comment struck a nerve for you.
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well if you're gonna be like that you're gonna be genuinely sorry you ever posted bitch *revs up chainsaw* But also, for real, I don't know what you want me to do here? I disagree with you. I have explained why. That isn't being antagonistic, that's just disagreement. I literally said I didn't think you were a bad person or anything, so, uh, what?
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Honestly I can think of a lot of series with a female protagonist where they adopt/pesudo-adopt and have subtext suggesting they could be with someone/s maybe. I can't think of any series where the heroine gets pregnant and has a kid where they were the only playable character and not paired with a hero as a couple. Hell series where the only playable character is a woman and they confirm a relationship straight or gay at all is basically VNs/adventure games only. Rorona being a biological mother would just be something different for the medium. Like keeping everything subtext so people can project whatever they want onto characters isn't bad, but honestly Rorona being a biological mother would infuriate the people that liked child Rorona more than anything else. And isn't that the greatest good? Endorph posted:I mean, the main thing I'm not getting is the tie into the 'biological' stuff, as if you're more or less of a mother based on that. The point is the stigma about implying a heroine has sex ever. Like a scene where Lulua walks in on Rorona and Cordy cause she gets home early would have the same effect but is even less likely to happen. A Sometimes Food fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:IMO Sired: Gio x Meruru's Dad
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A Sometimes Food posted:Like keeping everything subtext so people can project whatever they want onto characters isn't bad, but honestly Rorona being a biological mother would infuriate the people that liked child Rorona more than anything else. And isn't that the greatest good?
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# ? May 18, 2024 18:43 |
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"rorona should be straight so that we can piss off the market of people that gust specifically damaged the series' reputation trying to appeal to who are almost totally irrelevant in this situation" might be the worst take to ever be devised on the second loving page of an atelier thread
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