I interrupt the reviews of the routes right before the precious boy Victor to say: all my misgivings with Code: Realize pale in comparison to how much I hate Shirley and everything to do with her. The route itself isn’t horrible - fighting some unimportant mafia, going on a ‘cruise ship’, and seeing all the boys in hot new outfits are fine.
but Shirley
13 year old ‘I’m an adult let me kill people WAH IT’S ALL ABOUT ME LET ME ENDANGER EVERYONE OVER AND OVER AND OVER’ is absolutely unbearable, and the fact that Cardia tries to identify with her or the audience is supposed to sympathize with her childish, bratty behavior makes me itch for a skip button.
also
Cardia’s mentality/body is meant to be something like 17/18, judging by the romances and weddings, so let’s not pretend that her hanging out with a 13 year old sheltered rich girl is somehow ‘hanging out with a girl her own age’. That’s baby sitting. And Shirley keeps endangering both her, Cardia, and other people’s lives and it gets shrugged off like ‘she’s just growing up!’
my gosh, you have a boat full of hostages with adults trying to formulate a plan to deal with a drug dealing human trafficker, and Shirley LITERALLY THROWS A SCREAMING TEMPER TANTRUM AND FLINGS THINGS AGAINST A WALL IN ANOTHER ROOM WHILE THEY DO THAT.
Shirley is not ‘precocious’, she’s a spoiled brat that ruins this whole extra story.
