That mixed feeling about wuwa is totally understandable bcs while sometimes I get pissed at kuro treatment towards the husbandos I can't help liking some of the women too cus like?? Holy shit these women are so hot dawg I want one irl.
Also the mrover Rizz is so real. I really want to get rizzled by him by any means, bro got so much aura he even got the player weak on the knees just for being the best man alive in that universe. I can't describe how amazing of a man he is.
Also hear me out, mrover before memory wipe as a yandere....🫨🫨and current rover trying so hard to deny that fact.
the circumstances of your first meeting had been less than ideal.
you hadn’t known he was the astral modulator then, and had been assigned a mission to several disaster zones to install and test the beacon prototypes; as one of the members who partook in the research, you had only known that he tagged along as a sorts of bodyguard and important figure of the blackshores.
you can still remember his face, settled into a neutral and passive expression, his eyes almost cold, his lips pressed into a thin line. there had been something imposing and intimidating about him even though he wasn’t trying to be, but you think that might have been because he didn’t talk much at first. you also hadn’t liked the way his gaze bore into the back of your skull, but that feeling quickly faded away with the focus of work and the stress of venturing into disaster zones.
and well, you learn to be very thankful due to the amount of tacet discords in the areas.
(the “bodyguard” had looked scary as hell, somehow pristine clean even after mowing all those TDs like eating lunch. but to be honest, if you had a favorability rating like in your games, it would probably have been going “+1 +1 +1…” with the amount of times he protected your ass.)
nowadays, it is jarring whenever you look back and compare the astral modulator who you first met and the one you know now.
for one, he likes to smile, a lot. it’s a very lovely smile. his features are actually usually gentle and soft, and they stiffen only when he is extremely tired, stressed, or furious. you are lucky to have never been the recipient of his anger, but you have seen it before and he is… very, very scary.
but mostly, when he is with you, he is kind. gentle. his laugh makes your stomach flip like fish on land, and his eyes shine like sunflare everlastings. the way he sometimes loom over your back is not intimidating anymore, and instead gives you a sense of safety and confidence that makes you puff up. and you have learnt that, well, his chest was very, very warm with those few times you had shed tears at night when you thought you had been alone (you never get used to the catastrophes and the aftermath). his presence is reassuring and a source of safety. he is… he is handsome.
you want to slap yourself.
well, all those sparkly mushy feelings was all before you had learnt that the bodyguard were crushing on was actually the astral modulator. those fluffy feelings smashed against a wall with a splat and you hadn’t quite been able to look at him the same. you were mortified. you still are.
you hadn’t dared look at his face the first time you had avoided his familiar touch on your head (and perhaps it was best you didn’t) but you hear he had left the camp not long after it.
he still smiles at you. he is still kind and gentle. but you know he is gettin… confused? hurt?… by the way you are distancing yourself.
you know to expect for him to corner you eventually, but you still shrink like a a scarefrost deer as he near-slams his hands against the wall next to your head, effectively trapping you.
(actually, you can still duck under his arm and scurry away, but his dark expression makes your survival instincts shriek that it’s a Bad Idea.)
you think you might have heard two cracks next to your head, but you don’t dare turn your head to check.
“we have to talk”, he says tersely. his eyes are scary, slightly shadowed behind his bangs as he looms over you. he is giving you chills the same way he had when you two had first started to get acquainted.
you have a feeling you won’t be able to inch your way out of this conversation.
in the future, rover would find out more about you as the story progresses, through side quests, exploration, and any kind of readable left behind by reader or lord arbiter and anyone else
he slowly realizes that he had close relation with you and finds it an alien concept. like everything else, he doesn’t remember you, and to say less of the fact that you have been dead for far too many years.
shorekeeper, the one who supposedly had known him the longest, tells him his past self had told her not to speak of her to the current him, this is why the rover learns of you through readables and a long journey.
(some readables speak of the arbiter’s silence after your death. of his cold gaze, and the suffocating way he had felt in the pov of the author who wrote the readable.)
you and arbiter’s story is buried in time. no one alive knows of your story anymore.
it doesn’t take long for rover to know he had been compromised, and he isn’t particularly against the thought, but neither does he feel anything about it. he just… finds the knowledge alien.
(and that is how it all begins again)
