In the nearby depressed burg of Ferris City, Cary Rivera, the world’s frowniest career guidance counselor, has gotten her hands on a terrible case: the five-member pop band Dream Come True. With their band wracked with scandal and the possibility of disbandment, Cary needs to help DCT get ‘real’ jobs, and reintroduce them to the working world. But they aren’t going to make it easy for her--after all, what self-respecting Idol gives up without a fight?
The Gay Idol Dramedy You Deserve! Join Cary Rivera as she tries desperately to tame the larger-than-life, but secretly sad, members of pop band Dream Come True! Five idols, five stories, and all of the laughs, secrets, beautiful angst, and huge surprises that only a very gay group of women can provide
Long time Yuri Veteran Takes Up The Pen! After half a decade of complaining, Whining About Yuri has finally decided to make her own! Mistress of snickering and salt is back, bringing her unique humor and genre tough love to make a rich story with wonderful characters, all without sacrificing the goofy romp a good yuri romance should be
Character Designs by the lovely @wanderbrack! DUDE JUST. LOOK AT THOSE PURTY LADIES. Do you need an excuse to look at more art from the great illustrator herself? Of course you don’t!
FREE TO READ! The episodes are max 1.5 k words each, they update every Wednesday, and are COMPLETELY FREE to read! What’s more, with the unique ad revenue on Tapas, you could potentially stop two artist from starving, just by giving it a look! EXCELLENT!
One of my friends is about to go into webcomics and asked me for advice on how to network if you want to build and maintain an online…
Hey, guys! I made a post on Medium about building an audience/networking for new webcomic artists - especialy for folks who are considering making their living off comics or illustration. Check it out if you’ve got time!
This was based off a long e-mail I wrote for my friend @whiningaboutyuri, who runs a fun blog where she writes about different yuri/lesbian-focused media - the weirder, the better. She and her wife are also about to launch a webcomic, and it’s going to be great, so keep an eye out for it!
The context of this is that I’m trying to seduce a forty-year-old goth guy after our first hangout was busted by his teenage son trying to frantically bricklay some punk kid to death in his high school basement. Goth Dad wrote me a nice letter asking me to chill again though, so my kid daughter made me write him back AND I GOT TO MAKE IT MYSELF
One thing I’ve come to learn as I get older is that brilliant arguments can be made for ignorant points. For the better part of two months and two playthroughs, I’ve been desperately trying to suss out my feelings of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia. I could barely stomach to play it, but for reasons that have eluded me for a very long time. I’ve already engaged in debate in regards to the game’s take on gender being fraught with destructive stereotypes and a largely inferior story even to its bare-bones original. And I think the most shocking thing is that most people agree that, at the very least to some extent, the game does have conspicuous sexist elements in its execution, but still defend parts or whole of the game as either not “inherently” sexist, or having enough merits to be excused by its own logic. Even more upsettingly, there are accusations that sussing out these elements are somehow the more backwards and destructive attitude to have.
So I have taken it upon myself to make an actual, honest-to-goodness, two-part essay making a case that this game is built on a narrative with intention of enforcing an outdated, gender-essentialist view of sexism--which by no means makes a more liberal interpretation incorrect, merely working against the game’s original authorial intent. To a lesser extent, this is also an attempt to contextualize a disparate narrative and demonstrate that its logic is so entrenched in a real-world sexism that it simply cannot survive on its own without it. Which is a big fancy way of saying “a two-part essay to better explain the points I yelled at in a previous article, and to offer some counter argument to a lot of defenses of the narrative”.
Today’s essay is going to observe how Celica’s route suffers for the game’s sexist internal narrative. No, I am not writing a big slander against Celica’s character or deeming it ‘inferior’ to her previous counterpart. But there is a lot to be said about the handling of both.
Before we get started, let’s get some term definitions out of the way, to prevent us from going at each other’s throat. When I say sexism, I mean the stereotyping and/or presumption of inherent characteristics, often negative, based solely on someone’s sex and/or gender identity; especially the implicit ideal that on a binary of masculine and feminine, the latter is superior to the former. Long story short, “the shit we do between two same people because one is a boy and one is a girl”. Also important to note that, while it is very true that men are harmed by sexism, sexism works on a principle of the feminine inferiority to the masculine, and thus women tend to be disproportionately negatively affected by its thinking. Fair? Good. Let’s move on.
Another thing to understand is principles and presence of a sexist narrative DOES NOT equate to an inherent diminished value of any kind to female or feminine participants within it. Obviously, there’s a damn high comorbidity to grossly sexist writing and poorly executed female characters, but the latter is often a symptom, not the part of the disease. Does a bad or poorly executed female character a sexist narrative make? Not necessarily, but it can serve as a strong indicator since, as previously stated, women are disproportionately affected by sexist writing.
So now we’ve got that all out of the way, LET’S GET ARGUING!
POINT A: SHADOWS OF VALENTIA WAS BUILT WITH A GENDER BINARY IN MIND
One would be hard pressed to have a game that opens on such a stronger note of opposites that are doomed to conflict. We lay our scene on the continent of Valentia, divided in half on its border between the peaceful and non-aggressive Zofia, and the barren and war-torn Rigel. These two nations are ruled by two different dragon deities, with Zofia ruled by the kind and gentle Mila, and Rigel ruled by the cruel and disciplined Duma. Take a guess if they are represented by two different genders and which one is which.
It cannot easily be overstated that sex conflict is a critical element to this game’s thematic. In a Degenki interview with the game’s director, Toshiyuki Kusakihara, Kusakihara says thus about his interpretation of Fire Emblem Gaiden, the original game to be remade by his team:
“Gaiden’s central theme was always about a confrontation between the opposites, such as “strength/love” and “men/women.” Alm pursues a path to power, Celica stands on the side of love.”
Co-director Kenshi Nakashi goes on further to say:
Duma and Mila are the very representations of power and love. This battle isn’t really portrayed in the original Gaiden’s story, though...We wanted to make this story known to all players of the game, so many scenes were added for this purpose.
Before we know the in-game conflict in the timeline, the two nations waste no time being binarized and essentialized, with gender being no small thematic consequence. Despite being divine beings, Duma and Mila are given clear gender, and they are symbolized by a presumed, inherent quality of said gender expression. The symbol of manhood is strength, power, and military dominance, with its citizens warlike and devoid of compassion. The country symbolized by womanhood is peaceful, spiritual, without conflict, and thus rendering its residence childlike and self-indulgent.
And one more time for those in the back, this essentialization is not subtle. You play two stories, with each country’s represented by one who identifies with their corresponding deity's gender. The offical art has Alm holding a sword and looking forward, with Celica’s eyes closed and silently praying. The tagline at the back of the box says “THE WAY OF THE SWORD OR THE WAY OF THE HEART”.
Gender, or more specifically, a binary, essentialist view of gender takes center stage of this narrative. Femininity is not strength, and masculinity is not compassion. And, notably, these two concepts are immediately set in conflict with each other. These two caricatures of nations are pitched at the opposite ends of a steep divide, symbolized in game as a divine accord that cannot be crossed for the existential safety of the respective nations. Crossing it, indeed, was the beginning of all the woes that were to befall this game.
In a real world context, this is a logic that simply cannot exist. Putting aside that the inherent differences between men and women are notoriously debatable and have cross-culturally and cross-temporarily have been demonstrated as variable, the human experience is not so easily divided in such lofty concepts of “power” and “love”. But is a logic that we must adopt, despite our real world context and sensibilities, in order to accept the story. A suspension of disbelief is no strange, perhaps even a necessity, for the immersion into a work, but it is very telling, and very troubling, that this is the one that we must accept first and foremost.
POINT B: AS CONSEQUENCE OF THIS BINARY, CELICA’S STORY IS DOMINATED BY A NARROW VIEW OF HER WOMANHOOD
The female protagonist of the story, and the implicit representative of womanhood, is Celica, a kind young priestess living in a priory. Despite being an inheritor of the throne, she chooses a life rejecting the privilege of her heritage to better help her people. She is, unquestionably, a deeply maternal figure to be respected, admired, and loved. And within the priory, for very good reason, she absolutely is. However, when her homeland is in danger of a drought caused by a sudden disappearance of its patron goddess, Mila, she chooses to venture out and discover the truth of why Mila has disappeared, and to restore her blessings to the nation.
It’s a noble cause, and should, by all accounts, have made for a story of a bright young woman’s attempt to save her country by her own agency and own choices. And a story that rejects the essentialism of leadership, and finds empowerment in kindness, altruism, and peace is by no stretch a fantasy considering her character establishment. But the story is ‘the way of the sword versus the way of the heart’. Celica may care, but not in action. She may love, but it must be of a passive, impotent love that shatters in the logic of her world.
The first and foremost snarl is the fate of Celica’s motivation, which is to find Mila and restore her blessings. In the original Gaiden, the goddess Mila never appeared in story; she was sealed away in a magic, and remains such without any time to be shown on screen. In Echoes, it’s taken a step further in showing Mila being removed from the story by main antagonist of Alm’s story, King Rudolf. While the female god’s own lack of agency and easily incapacitation by a male antagonist, especially upon a later reveal that she was planning her own death and depowerment for the better of society, does leave a lot of iffy subtext, it’s still a reasonable plot twist, and leaves the locking into the final, actual conflict--that Celica needs to confront Duma to save Mila and restore her country. Or at least, that’s what it should be.
But from that point forward, Celica’s determination begins to notably wane. After the twist, she is tormented by Jedah, a disciple of Duma who convinces her that the only way to stop Duma’s assault is to sacrifice her soul to the dark god in order to ease his descent into madness. Celica is frequently confronted with how pointlessly foolish a plan this would be, both by herself and (to be discussed later) the increasing skepticism of her notably male companions.
One very interesting thing of note is the development of Celica’s lock-in motivation--not to contront Mila, but to assist the male counter protagonist, Alm. Celica and Alm did meet briefly and catastrophically before Celica discovered the disappearance of Mila. Upon seeing Alm’s decision to march on in a military campaign after liberating the accosted capital of Zofia, she inferred that his intent was to further break divine accord and invade Rigel, possibly in conquest to become emperor himself (to be fair--she is 100% right). So it’s very interesting that, when she is approached to sacrifice herself to Duma, the following (emphasis mine) is what begins to give her second thoughts.
Jedah: Her soul, as Duma’s, is host to the madness shared by all dragonkind. Duma will grow stronger till that power brings his ruin—and Rigel’s alongside it. It is no different from how Zofia now rots in Mila’s absence.
Celica: Her absence by your hand! And what is this madness you speak of? Do you truly claim that Mila and Duma are fated to destroy themselves?
Jedah: I do. Which is exactly why your soul is required. It is rare and precious—born of Zofian royal blood and marked by the Brand. Such a soul could set Duma’s path to rights and ensure his survival. And with Mila restored to her place, both our peoples might be saved. As for the boy, Alm—if you do this, he could lay down his arms.
Celica: *gasp*
Until this point, Celica’s motivation was unquestionably that of her country and her people. But this marks the first, but far the only, indication that her ‘true’ motivation is Alm; and more specifically, her relationship with Alm.
In fact, it becomes painfully clear that, even by her own admission, Celica’s motivation is transformed from “power”, the desire to protect and liberate her country, to “love”--her feelings for Alm. Is this troubling? Not necessarily; being motivated by loved ones is far from gender exclusive. But there is something troubling and damning by the direction Celica’s motivation goes. Compare her opening speech at the beginning of the game, where she begs the master of the priory to give his blessings for a mission to save her country…
Nomah: You’re certain I can’t dissuade you from going, little one?
Celica: I must, Nomah. It’s been years since crops last grew on Zofian soil. Our barren fields have fallen victim to Terrors, the Rigelians have invaded… I fear some ill must have befallen the Earth Mother, Mila. I can’t help but feel this is all related. I know it.
Nomah: Hmm… Perhaps it is, at that. I’ll not deny that the kingdom of Zofia faces her darkest hour in some time. More sick and hungry come to the priory’s door each day seeking aid…
Celica: The key to everything lies with Mila. I shall travel to her temple and learn what’s become of her.
Nomah: Yes, but little one… You know well the reason Mycen placed you in my care. With the king’s passing, you are the last living member of the Zofian royal line. There are many who would seek to use you. Or even end you. That threat is greater now than ever. Yet you would still leave, knowing that?
Celica: I must. Even if my decision betrays the care you and Mycen have shown me. You’ve done so much to keep me safe, and it breaks my heart to pain you. But what calls me to do this goes beyond my heart. I can only ask your forgiveness, Nomah.
To her conversation with Alm in the final act, before she agrees to the sacrifice.
Celica: You don’t understand, Alm. I came here knowing what awaited me.
Alm: What?
Celica: Back on the island, I had a dream. A dream where something terrible happened to you. So I decided to petition Mila for the strength to protect you. Yet for all my travels, you’ve still faced terrible danger. And you were even forced to end your own father’s life. …I’d seen it all. I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t change a thing. I failed to keep you safe, Alm!
Alm: That’s not… Celica, none of what’s happened is your fault. You’re not to blame for any of it!
Celica: But I won’t lose you… I won’t let any of you die! I don’t want you to fight Duma. I don’t want anyone to be hurt or killed. That’s my only desire in this life.
Alm: Celica!
Celica: And this is the only means I have of ensuring that comes to pass. So again, Alm—I’m sorry. I wish it could have been different. I always have. I wish I could have gone home to the village and lived there with you.
There was no reason that Celica’s motivation could not have been both her country and Alm. But by the game’s logic of power/love and man/woman, such would have been disruptive. Alm’s path, inevitably, drove him to violence in power, and Celica’s to self-sacrifice. By an external logic, this is absurd; Celica was already willing to defy authority to save Mila. She is a competent fighter, and rallied a group of soldiers to her cause. She cared about her army, and inspired them. But when push came to shove she could only engage proactively for so long. Her modus operandi goes from defying authority and venturing out to the world, to abandoning her army and her country in blind self-sacrifice. But to the game’s logic, one based on a sexist presumption that men and women are opposites, never to be crossed, and never to be reconciled, this is not idiosyncratic or a glaring farce, but a perfectly logical outcome.
It’s hard to parse where this change came from in Celica’s attitute. It is laced almost deviously into a few tells for the audience to pick up on. Celica goes from leading the charge without fear to apologizing for every action she’s taking. Her ‘flaw’ of keeping her emotions to herself develops when plot convenient and is used as a rough justification for her own leaps of motivation.
And her story is only further complicated by its execution...
POINT C: CELICA DOES NOT COMPLETE HER CHARACTER ARC WITHOUT THE AID OF OTHER MEN, ESPECIALLY ALM
It’s been argued that, despite being a roundabout path, Celica ultimately completes her mission of rescuing Alm and saving her country. I fundamentally disagree, because while it’s true that Alm is saved and Celica’s country is saved, it is by far and away not by her own hand.
If we consider her motivation is to save her country, while it is accomplished, it is not accomplished by her volition. She made great strides, and did many heroic things that benefited the country, but in the end, she never saved Mila nor did she liberate her country. By the final act, she has been manipulated by Jedah, her army has been condemned to die at the hands of terrors, and her hard work is rendered yet another crisis for Alm and his army to resolve.
Neither did Celica save Alm. Indeed, while she was willing to sacrifice her life and her dream to save Alm from being killed, she agreed to the manipulations of one who she knew from the start was untrustworthy, and thus could not save Alm without Alm’s participation of saving her first. Indeed, the last time Celica is an agency of her own in the story, it’s screaming for Alm to kill her because of how badly she failed in trying to save him.
And this cannot be overstated: this scene was not in the original game. Yes, Celica was trapped in Duma tower, but when you met her, she had her army in full swing, and was fighting for herself until Alm came to rescue her. When Celica meets Alm in Echoes, she’s kept apart in a cage, willing marching off to do something that she and Alm and her own army and the audience knows is completely and utterly foolish, while Jedah is treating her defection as another failure of Alm’s for not being able to save her. By the end of the game, not even Celica’s mistakes are her own.
Another thing that cannot be overstated is that this is not limited by endgame. Another completely added addition to the game is Celica’s brother, Conrad, who travels incognito and rushes in to save her for frequently contrived reasons. And yes, he does slap her when he learns that she’s planning to sacrifice herself to Duma (again why could he not just talk to her like a reasonable goddamn human being?).
Beyond that, there’s the inflated weight of Saber, the adult male traveling companion of Celica’s groups. He was literally nothing but a background drunk in the original game. In Echoes, he becomes Celica’s right hand and “mature” foil to her idealistic and sheltered ways. And sure, he may be loyal to her, but he’s far from respectful--calling her ‘lass’ instead of her name (hey, and it’s not like women have to deal with that stuff in the workplace, right?) and generally insistently inserting his own opinion into her decisions. It’s even worth noting that the game explicitly blocks Celica from going out to sea unless she hires him, despite the fact that she a warrior priestess who can uses swords and magic. Compare this to Alm, who has to go against his father figure in order to start his story (and continuously defies a characters acting as consul).
There’s a lot of internal justification to why Celica can be talked down by these other characters. A lot of it comes down to the game’s attitude of her being sheltered, or citing the every-justifying flaw of ‘hiding her emotions’. But there is more than a few notes of gendered hypocrisy, even in the text. When Conrad obfuscates a grand design in what he thinks is best for his country's interests, it’s portrayed as heroic. When Celica does it, it’s portrayed as selfish. When Saber can be flippant and weary, it’s justified because he’s a seasoned mercenary with world experience. When Celica is short, people immediately question it, like her fight with Alm, or when she gets upset at Conrad for slapping her.
But I think the most telling thing is not just that Celica’s right hands, sound boards, and foils are all men, but which men they are. Celica has a team of people who love her and respect her at the priory. Mae, Boey, and Genny all joined her because the loved and trusted her, and believed in what she can do. But the game conspicuously doesn’t let them be Celica’s confidants, and even shoes them out at plot critical moments to give room for these respectable male outsiders to save their peace and, more than once, save her instead of her own team.
POINT D: CELICA’S NARRATIVE IS NOT RECONCILED WITH ALM’S--IT’S ABSORBED BY HIM
At the end of the story, Celica’s birthright means nothing. Her desire to save her country means nothing. Her army has been absorbed into Alm’s, and she herself is married to him. She is not a queen because she was born of Zofian royalty, or because she rallied an army. She is not a queen because she gave her all to save her people. Because as the very story developed, her dream was to be accosted, and her story in arrested development. In the end, she is queen because she is Alm’s bride.
But Alm got to see the Valentia he wanted to create. He got to see a world without gods, and got to continue an empire of his own two hands. Alm accomplished everything he set out to do, and far more. But despite the divine accord of opposites being broken, it feels like nothing is different. In essence, the answer to the riddle of man and woman is the implication that there was no need for the woman to exist.
In the original game, Celica was an agent in the final battle. She was tricked by Duma, but in the final fight, she was allowed to hold back an army by her own hands to buy Alm the time he needed to find the key to Duma’s defeat. She made a mistake, but she was allowed, by her own hands, to redeem herself and take action to protect and aid the course of history. So for all it’s sexist origins, even in the original game, Celica was allowed to have something in the end. For the story to work, she was needed, or else Alm would have been trapped and unable to accomplish his mission.
Celica’s route could not exist without Alm. She would have lost what the game would deem her development and her motivation. Alm’s story could and did exist without Celica. Alm would have still followed his path that would inevitably lead him to Duma with no consequence. He would have been the hero who was the chosen one, who stopped the bad guys, who toppled the evil empire, who slew the god, and who saved the world. The only thing he’d be missing is a bride.
Very rarely will you run into a story with a strict-text statement along the lines of “women are less than men”. But like so many social ills, sexism has a language all it’s own, one that gets none-too-lost in translation. The game isn’t saying that women can’t be leaders, but the remake made sure Celica’s attempt to be one resulted in her death. The game isn’t saying women need to be saved, but Celica’s choices always seem to land her into trouble that she can’t get herself out of. The game isn’t saying that women can’t fight, or women can’t make good decisions, or that women are weaker, but it makes sure there’s a steady stream of plot contrivance for Celica to trip on, as well as a team of competent men to catch her fall. It’s not saying that a woman’s place is to be a wife, it just happens to be Celica’s happy ending. And it’s not saying that women are inferior, it just made a game where men are pitted against women, and let only one of our two protagonists hold the sword to save the world. And by the game’s logic, that makes perfect sense.
Anyway, this is only step one in sitting down and getting mad at a game none of my readers have played. As I said, men too are hurt from sexism too. For instance, it gives them stories that are laughably stupid and teeth achingly boring.
Another dark day in modern medicine. Upon hearing that all the cool lesbians have healing magic, I remember that my sister probably has it too! She cures my headaches by banging her head against mine and chants some made up magic garbage. Then probably jabs an Excedrin or two up my nose. And I guess part of the magic is that she’s got to get as uncomfortably close to kissing distance as possible--which makes sense, as she uses it as an opportunity to get me to straddle her later down the line.
Now the real work has begun. And what do you know! I suck at it! It’s enough to get Sakuya on my case because I shouldn’t be pursuing a nursing career for no good reason. To be fair, she is one thousand percent right. Though I can’t help but feel miffed that she jumps down my throat and ignores that my sister stated in no small terms that she’s just here to creep on me
SAKUYA YOUR SHAMING IS NEEDED ELSEWHERE
Also my first practical lesson is old fashioned bed making, not like, taking blood pressure or making sure vitals are stable or learning how to do an EKG or such. But I am so goddamn wackily useless, I apparently twist the bedsheets into a rough shape of two people getting it on. If it’s any explanation, my sister was helping.
After all that, my sister-wife and I walk home with the kinky lesbian couple, silently shaming each other all the way. They reveal their mad bed making skills come from practicing on each other (I bet), and I continue to listlessly wonder why I was born. But Nao steps up to the challenge of helping me, and decides to limit my bathroom privileges until I can guess human anatomy correctly.
My God. Everything. The murder. The peeing. It all comes back to one woman.
This is the story of how one sister-wife destroys the the house of healing.
op just forgot that the reason why Conrad acted the way he did was because he was Celica’s older brother and he didn’t want his sister THROWING HER LIFE AWAY IN A SLIGHT ATTEMPT TO SAVE EVERYONE FROM BEING DESTROYED BY THE MADNESS OF DUMA
but, y’know, wanting his sister to preserve her soul meant he was just being a chauvinist and thought that she was just a dumb woman who couln’t think for herself
also while we’re at it, never once did Saber try to shut Celica up and was actually very loyal and obedient to her, whatever Celica said she wanted to do, he went along with her even when he questioned her actions
the only criticism I can get behind was the writing making her gulible enough to trust ht eobviously evil Jedah in offering her soul to Duma, but even then she was facing a dilemma and it was already established that Celica often acted out more on her emotions and sometimes didn’t act on logical thinking (but even then, ALM is also very emotionally driven). Not to mention that the original game also had Celica sacrifice herself to help Alm and she had to be saved by him, so I don’t know where the criticism from remake!act 5 is coming from.
while I do have problems with the way Echoes portrays some of its female characters (still can’t get over Mathilda’s capture or Faye’s obsession towards Alm), the way they handled Celica’s story is not one of these problems. If you have issues with the writing of Echoes, at least don’t make old Celica react to it like this is some new bullshit writing, because these elements were also in the original, it just had less script to it
OP is way too nice a lady to jump on something like this. Good thing I'm not.
So hey, one point I thought was interesting--you mentioned that Celica and Alm are both emotional people who are very personally invested. So isn't it sort of weird that Celica is the one who has to pay for it, and Alm doesn't? Isn't it kind of weird everyone gets on Celica's case for her emotional flaw, but the one time Celica points out that Alm just marching through Rigel long after the Zofian capital was reclaimed looks really frigging bad, the only blowback Alm got was "WOW MAN, why the hell was Celica on your case like that?! Sheesh! Weren't you friends for like five days when you were both seven?!" Hell, Alm's not-logical, class-defying, social-defying and dare I say naive thinking was seen as a virtue. His determination to put his army at risk to save a single life was heroic. But when Celica did it? She was emotionally weak and selfish.
Also, sure, Saber may have never told Celica to go sit in a corner and make him a sandwich, but isn't it a little damning that the writer's chose him to be the sound-board foil for all their plans? Him, the clearly only Badass Real Man? The same Badass Real Man who wasn't above shoving a "wow, look at this spoiled little rich princess for actually PAYING me for a job which is what she's supposed to do because I'm a mercenary and I get paid" under his breath when she hired him? Not to mention he kept calling her "lass" instead of her name, even though she was his boss AND he had long since figured out she was a princess. Which is only one step above walking around calling her "sweetcheeks".
And hey! Maybe the OP's complaint wasn't "wow, every man is a misogynist for not letting Celica ride her pony all over Valentia and get everything she wanted for nothing like Alm did!" And maybe her dick brother slapping isn't sexist per se, even if it looks bad that Mycen never got slapped for lying for nigh decades to Alm, or Clive never got slapped for stealing his wife's idea for an army and leaving her to die AND saying 'hey Alm, kill that small child, we have no time to waste', or Fernand got slapped for being a classist asshole, or Conrad got slapped right back for lying to Celica for years when she thought he was stone cold dead and/or not able to talk to her like a rational human being without decking her one. And hey, maybe we read too much into a woman who was motivated to save her country AND save her loser boyfriend was maybe actually kind of progressive writing (BECAUSE WHO WOULD DO THAT? WASN'T THIS GAME MADE IN NINETEEN NINETY SOMETHING?).
Maybe, just maybe, what the OP was saying is that the writing was sexist--not even the writers, just the game she expected both of the protagonists to be treated like protagonists. And maybe she was pointing out all the things that objectively weren't in the original that didn't need to be added and look freaking bad for it (like, I dunno, every single panel). Because, yes actually, there was plenty of stuff that "wasn't there" the first time around. They added characters, including Brother McSlapSense. They added plot lines. They took Saber from a worthless drunk who's only line was "I'm drunk" to a Badass Real Dude who was worth more of Celica's time and script then her actual friends. They took "the guy who you only used because his name was Python" and turned him into the most hilarious character in the game. They gave Forsyth a class anxiety. They game Jedah an actual motivation. They gave a flat villain from a completely different goddamn game a different motivation.
And what did Celica get? She went from beating off a hoard of zombie dragons protecting Alm while he picked up the Cheat Sword to getting stabbed in the gut. She got a brother to drag her out of danger for her. And she got cutscene after cutscene of her either worrying about Alm, running after Alm, or getting stabbed by Alm.
Maybe Old Celica wouldn't be pissed. But I sure would have been.
And thus begins our medical disaster. Since this is a VN, the first 10 hours move about as fast as an entire season of Marimite, so I’m going to try to keep things as breezy as possible.
As you do, my character is a miserable dead beat who never did anything before this point, and thus is dumb as a sack of bricks. She decided to be a nurse because her shit-around friends were planning to move on with their lives, giving her an existential crisis. She decided to search for her life’s meaning in her bedroom closet (again, as you do), and finds it in an old picture book where her three-year-old self wrote she wanted to be a nurse. So her justification was “well, I want nothing with the saving and rehabilitating of human lives, but my thumb-sucker past self probably did, so EH, good enough”.
Also my sister is here because she wants to continue to wife over me forever, and I guess hope for some surreptitious college experimentation on the side. The future of health care, ladies and gents.
Um, okay
Also, they’re not the ones furiously chain smoking and wearing actual hospital scrubs.
Now we get into the usual conga line of all my dating options running up to introduce themselves. I ambiguously drool over all of them, including my teacher and the two kinky campus lesbians (not that all the other students aren’t screaming and drooling over them too because DON’T WORRY THEY ARE). They’re all superhuman, what with my teacher winning the Best Nurse Ever award but turning it down for REASONS, and the kinky campus lesbians being nominated for best couple ever every year since they hooked up in junior high.
And I have to reiterate that the KCLs are an actual canon couple, and this game introduces them both as dating options. So uh, screw you game.
Also, the game tries to use space as best as it can. And by that I mean It tries to compensate it’s 16:9 ratio with introducing everyone at a creepy dutch angle.
So Sakuya (a.k.a. Baby Princess) introduces me by telling me to get bent, and Itsuki (a.k.a. Hot Glasses Jerk) speaks in esoteric vagueries and then skips off after calling me a dumbass. But to keep up the general sense that I have no business dating anyone, let alone them, my sister wife drops the bomb that they may have ‘healing hands’, the ability to heal the sick at a supernatural rate. So yeah, not only are they way out of my league. They may actually be magic. WEYULP. My teacher it is then.
So all in all, not a bad first day. I keep it in my pants, I keep my pee out of my pants, and the death count is currently zero. I just need to keep it up for the rest of my academic career. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?!
So okay, I seriously need to talk about Nurse Love Addiction. Word on the yard is it’s a ‘darker’ and ‘more serious’ take on the Yuri VN. Clearly coming from a mindset where everyone being drawn in pink crayons and looking seven wasn’t a flag for mass cast murdering.
I was really expecting it to be unremarkably dull, but six hours in and...well, I’ve already had to grab my friends on a holiday weekend and bleed out what happened. Though it was less a “dude someone died!” need-to-get-it-out so much as a “MY MAIN CHARACTER PEED ON THE FLOOR IN SOLIDARITY WITH ANOTHER CHARACTER PEEING ON THE FLOOR, I THINK IT’S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW THIS, ALSO HEY, HAPPY FOURTH GUYS. AND THIS IS A YURI GAME, I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE SAID THAT FIRST”.
So what the hell, if this is some divine call for me to come out of an unofficial hiatus, then who am I to argue. Let’s take a deeper look into one of the highest humanitarian callings there is, through the eyes of a literal pissbaby and her little friends. But first, dramatic personae.
ASUKA
The dude I’m playing as. I am somehow supposed to be assured that this is a nineteen year old woman completely capable of sexual consent. You can tell she’s a protagonist because she is single, stupid, and unable to feed herself into her late teens. Her motivation is that of the classic VN protag, i.e. actually do something, someday, maybe? And her character turning point is wetting herself in an ICU.
Though giving this game due credit, this pink stain doesn’t have a harem of hungry lesbians swimming around her like a pack of sharks. She only has her sister-housewife, who mitigates things by being deeply disturbed and codependent.
Speaking of that...
NAO
My creepy ass sister-girlfriend; as pictured above; my peeing moves her deeply. I have strong suspicions that she may be the “canon” girl with all the official artwork floating around of them cuddling and hugging each other’s arms and crap, to which I say...okay, sure.
I won’t lie, the incest doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that I’m pretty sure she’s drugging my food with how incapable I am of getting up in the morning without her threatening to kiss me. I am utterly at her mercy for food, laundry, toilet training, and studying--you know, like anyone’s kid sister would do. Also, she said that if she wasn’t my sister, she’d happily be my stalker instead. To which I say...okay sure.
I am 85% sure they’re going to drop a “Not Blood Siblings” bomb to make this less weird. I am 100% sure it will only serve to creep me out more. Hot contender for “yeah, I can see this chick going bonkers and kacking someone.”
Kaede
My teacher. But I’m nineteen, so it’s fine. Also, I think she may be nineteen too, which makes it finer?
Her biggest standout thus far is that she’s shockingly low on the sleaze option totem pole. I think they’re going for “hot genius instructor ditz with a DARK SECRET”, but she’s somehow totally selling it. Granted, most of this is based off a part where I showed her my crotch in concern that I have yet to grow hair (for reasons that SORT OF make a little more sense in context). And she made the whole thing surprisingly not weird?
Not to mention her surname is Ohara, which I think is someone’s surname in Freezing, which is a good enough reason to like any character in this game. It’s pretty telling when dating your instructor seems like the sane option of your romance corral.
SAKUYA AND ITSUKI
The campus’s evil lesbian couple. They are even introduced with “we are totally, actually having sex” sparkles. As you can see, their character designs are beautifully bizarre, like they’re trying to throw regular clothes over their BDSM costumes and pass it off as “trendy”. But they are shockingly equitable, if only because they’re probably actually in love, and locked in a passionate battle of who is more dom and who can shove more weird straps out of their nethers.
The girl to the left is Sakuya. I think she might be canon-leaning girl number two, because. She’s rich! And hot! And she hates me! Being a potential romantic partner, she is perfect at everything, was planning to be a nurse for a bajillion years, and may have actual magic. She can’t walk into a room without either yelling at me or grinding a heel in my face, but it’s offset by her being EASILY EMBARRASSED YEE HOO HOO HOO. The jury’s out on whether her design is the best or the worst of the cast.
The girl on the right is Itsuki. She’s the “enigmatic cackling mastermind” type to try to hide the fact that she’s a huge nerd with no friends other than her girlfriend. As you do. Also, she has glasses, so she’s...smart? Or at least a little more assholey. I’m pretty sure that dating her is an objective mistake no matter which angle you take it. Not gonna lie, she’s currently my top pick for the one I’m guessing to start a-murdering people. And if she is, I’m really hoping she knocks of my crazy sister.
So yeah, I’ll admit a big part of this game’s sell is that there’s literally no way you cannot commit a dark human sin if you actually pursue any of these girls. Let alone the fact that you yourself are an incontinent sponge brain just shy of twenty, your only dating options are your sister, your teacher, or breaking up two perfectly happy super villains. SO I OF COURSE AM ONE THOUSAND PERCENT IN LETS DO THIS GUYS
By my unilateral power over the every single person in the gay community, I hereby decree the only way we will be satisfied is if Nintendo Treehouse turns Soliel into Prax
Signed,
Shelby Whineabout
Unfun Feminist, Professional Ikuhara Yeller Atter, and HOMOSEXUAL EQUALIST
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