One of the things I most wanted to emphasize with these two was how they fit into the setting—that being a desperate war right after WWI. I thus tried to make them about as accurate to the period as I could, while also keeping in mind how Grave/Diggers’ more notable lore aspects (like the Golden Empires’ faith) shaped them.
Also, I am allergic to things like colorful catgirls in realism-based settings. They don’t fit the lore or the tone of the setting in the slightest, and I can’t take them anymore seriously than you can.
And that stands out. I like it a lot because of that aspect. They seem rather reasonable because they actually fit into the damn setting. Plus, they act… Rather human. Seriously I don’t get why people like so much romance slop I mean sure the author pulls all the stops out for specific scenes but even your beloved yuri has other parts that just don’t add up and-
Sorry. I just don’t fully get the point behind a lot of romance stuff (and often yuri as well; I’ve seen great yuri that blows so much romance stuff out of the water, but I’ve seen many more that just feel like “this is just what people say ‘hetslop’ is but with women”)
AND THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS
I rue the fucking day someone decided to start making catgirls in Grave/Digger. Completely ruins the tone of the fucking setting.
…Of course Red had already begun nuking her own lore by then. From a desperate struggle to making forced protagonists and antagonists in a setting that was made for dark, gritty realism.
The game’s tone was better when we had both sides fighting without much of a stated reason aside from “Golden Empire on a crusade, Royal Nation claiming to just be fighting for survival”
This is my primary striving within Solace and Work: to get the characters to feel about as real as possible even with limited screentime and keeping the plot moving. I’d say dialog is actually one of the harder aspects in this regard—any written dialog is shorter than real conversations, and they have to include both the subject of the conversation and some amount of subtext to be interesting. Keeping the characters’ multiple motives in mind while ensuring they respond properly to what the other is saying… it’s not as easy as you’d think.
I assure you the train rescue scene was entirely and absolutely feasible and not at all me realizing “frick, how do I get them out of this? Uhhhh… bullet.”
Jokes aside, I’d actually like to hear what you feel is lackluster. I absolutely agree that some things are a bit sloppy, but I’m not entirely positive as to what those are, and knowing for certain would be a large help.
LGBTQ shipping as a whole rarely has more weight to it than hetero shipping, if I am to be honest. People say things like “oh, well, it’s not automatically assumed like hetero shipping”, and while that is technically true… it’s also not. Sometimes it really is “ooohh! They’d be cute!”
I mean, look, I do think Vi and Caitlyn are cute together, but let’s not pretend like they aren’t just cop x criminal but with women.
Romance as a whole in media is rarely well done, because writers don’t think about its foundations very much. Why are Megan and Joan together? Because they were both scared out of their minds and desperate to connect with another human being before what could’ve been their final moments. That combined with the innate thrill of doing something you know to be disapproved of.
I mean, hey, we as Arcane Odyssey players know nothing of nuked lore, amiright?
Distant sobbing.
Grave/Digger’s setting needs work to be used for writing. My main changes are below:
The Grave/Digger timeline split off during the 1400s where the murder of Jeanne D’Arc caused widespread change in the religion of Europe.
The French did not assist the American Colonists during the American Revolution, causing said revolution to fail. America retried decades later, using imperialism to force the colonies together under the banner of the Kingdom of America.
The Kings/Queens war spent about 5 years above ground, having a slow and rocky start due to both sides being weakened after WW I. The transition underground was gradual, albeit hastened by advancements in chemical warfare.
Only parts of Europe and the East Coast of the US are underground. The US deploys its soldiers via what few ships it has left to Europe where they head underground in France.
Poland is flipping gone bro. You don’t survive 5 years of war surrounded on all sides. Honestly, Poland being part of the Royal Nation makes barely any sense (probably only due to the Polish War for Independence) when it would get decimated by a united Europe.
Admittedly, this is going further off the deep end with potentially overdeveloping the lore, and it likely wouldn’t work for a video game, but… yeah, this just works more for me better than the actual lore.
Honestly, it mostly comes down to having friends who are obsessively about yuri and they always talk about how it’s the best romance there is.
And hey, some of their favorite stories are real hit-and-home-run stories that massively beat out most other romances I’ve seen. But a lot of the ones I see them go nuts over just… Same as any “hetslop” out there. Featuring janky introductions or ahem harassment to varying severity, or other concerning issues.
I’m mostly just not understanding the rave about the stories that just feel like parallels to contemporary romance, or the presumably forbidden S word. (it has a M if that clarifies further)
Like, it’s always sold as “better” when I ask them about it when only a few are really… “Better”
Oh, I thought you meant that you had criticism for Solace and Work or of Prisoners of the Royal Nation, lol. You meant your friends’ beloved yuri, not mine. Guess I misread that.
God, yes. I hate this trope so much. I don’t know if it’s because the writers get their knickers all twisted by it or what, but one of my genuine least favorite things to see in fiction is supposed “lesbian” characters who harasses women as their primary gimmick.
Do people like that exist in real life? Probably. Should they be used in fiction for the sole purpose of satiating something perverse in the audience? Hell no.
I feel that homosexual shipping’s only advantage over heterosexual shipping is in the fact that it is not socially obligated. This means that the characters’ connection should be founded on character-based motivations, rather than exterior pressures or assumptions on what a man and woman “should” do.
The issue is—again—if you handwave that in exchange for “aww, they’d be cute” or “they’re both horny and figured why not”, then yuri has no inherent advantage in quality over straight relationships.
I’m a Ao3 user, how did it take me over a minute to get this?
Agreed, yeah. Funnily enough, most of my favorite ships from other peoples’ works are indeed heterosexual.
Waxillium Ladrian and Steris Harms my beloveds
And also Zelda Hyrule and Link, though I’ll admit they’re mostly implied and heavily improved by fanfic
Again, yuri has the potential to have a better basis than many hetero ships. That doesn’t mean that it automatically does, or even that many do.
I can say, unfortunately yes. And in all variations. I actually blame stuff like that for it in part, and the other part on desperation caused by some incredibly mismanaged source of the thought process.
Regardless, yeeaah. I distinctly remember one yuri they were talking about that was in this territory in a frankly disconcerting way. Supposed to be a “coming out” story but I don’t think harassment leading up to that door opening is exactly a great way of depicting that.
If that’s it, then I’ve really been sold a lie. Though that does kind of explain the misery in “hetslop” (this term had to come from twitter bruh) with its own boring romances.
That being said, yeah, the potential’s deffo there. But it’s becoming apparent that, uh… Those guys are probably cracking it up to be more than it is.
“Hmm… I’ve recently been learning a lot of things about myself. And I now know who I’d prefer as a romantic partner. Now how should I treat the sex I now know I like?
Oh! I know! I’ll harass and abuse them! My fellow women don’t get enough of that!”
Despite all of my words of warning regarding peoples’ promotion of yuri, I also cannot deny that around 90% of hetero ships are nothingburger pairs.
Maybe shipping as a whole is a doomed medium. All the fanfic writers will have to go elsewhere (as if).
I have an acquaintance who is obsessed with yuri too, and I have often found myself wanting to knee her in the crotch. She never shuts up about it.
if people start forming FRIENDships then maybe the roblox community can heal from the damage inflicted by communities like that of forsaken (and similar games)
