Tales of Graces f: DAY NINE

[sincere]

I may be doing a major roleplay event in which my character is the major player in the other window, but you know what I'm going to do when I'm not tagging like a fiend?!

That's right. I'm going to cry over Richard. I mean, play TOG.


Starting from: Crying over Richard. I mean, done with Strahta.

Comments

[sincere]

RECAP! King Richard the Headvoicey will go down in history as the only king of Windor to ever simultaneously run the entire planet into the ground while fighting off the crazy thing in his head telling him to kill his best friends. To stop him from getting to the third nation, we're heading to a place called Warrior's Roost.

But not without doing lots of siiiiidequeeeeests!

[sincere]

Sidequest! Marian, a friend of Hubert's whose relationship with him is not elaborated upon, is introduced to Hubert's friends and confesses that she lost her gem-polishing tools. Let's go get them.

Hubert calls Asbel a big lunk, in flagrant defiance of reality, in which his older brother is in fact one inch taller and six pounds heavier than Hubert himself. Asbel looks super scrawny once you take away his giant shoulderpads and bellbottoms.

[temples]

But why would you ever want to take away the shoulderpads and bell bottoms?

[sincere]

We found the tools! Hubert dismisses her old tools, complaining about how they're worn out and she should get new ones. Marian tells us Hubert gave them to her. (And he's annoyed that she tells us.)

Asbel: Hubert?! Gave a present?! To a girl?!

Asbel: I think I need to lie down...

Hubert: Everyone's a comedian. 8|

Hubert gave her the tools at a time of her life when she didn't know what to do with herself, and that helped her make up her mind about her future... and about Hubert.

Cheria is all up in this gossip!! And Hubert just sighs.

[sincere]

Sidequest again! These people recognize Sophie omg it's her real family omg they're calling her Moira Asbel is so excite!! Malik is skeptical but the picture of Moira does look a lot like Sophie.

The maid catches us afterward and asks if we can help her out... Moira was killed by monsters in the desert a year ago. The "mom" is delusional and the "dad" is going along with it because "mom" hasn't been happy in so long. They won't believe the maid, so -- we have to do it.

Awkwaaaard.

[sincere]

Found Moira's skeleton in the desert! Hooray! Also a locket. Less traumatizing to offer the parents.

[sincere]

END BATTLE!

Hubert: Over in a flash!!

Sophie: How long is a flash?

Asbel: Uh, less than a second.

Sophie: Why is he lying? :(

Hubert: ...these insufferable...

[everdistant]

Riiichaaaaaard ;;

[sincere]

Bawww it was so sad his headvoices wanted him to kill us :(

[sincere]

Sidequest!

Duke Dalen: Hey, can you check out something in Wallbridge for me?

...Nothing to say about Richard?

Duke Dalen: We heard there was some trouble there, but it's too dangerous to let my men investigate, so I thought I'd send you saps.

...Hey, remember all those times when you fired us on Richard's behalf? And then Richard turned out to be crazy and ate all Barona's eleth? Good times, huh?

Hubert: This is a ridiculous and selfish request.

Asbel: We'll do it!

Hubert: ...

...So... anybody want to talk about Richard? No? This is a sidequest?

Duke Dalen: Thanks. I'll be waiting in Barona when you're done.

...Where we still won't talk about Richard.

[sincere]

We do, actually! Although when he's brought up, Dalen is very much like, "GAH! I did not want to talk about Richard."

[temples]

Wait, Richard ate people?

[sincere]

END BATTLE!

Asbel: Sometimes I can't help but regret the past...

Cheria: Asbel.........

Asbel: Why didn't I ask for a raise in my allowance?!

Cheria and Hubert: ...What.

I love it. That's right, Asbel! Shake off the chains of your self-loathing! Defy expectations! Be ridiculous if you want to be!

[temples]

....... /snrk.

[sincere]

Ugh, I'm going to spend all tonight doing sidequests, aren't I.

[rainfall]

The alternative being to put the guide down and get what you get. XD But............

[sincere]

I have an item in my inventory called "forktorquer", the image of which is a question mark, and the description of which is "An object that, like, you really want to nurture and take care of."

[sincere]

Oh god. How to even describe this. This kid mistook Sophie for someone (again) and introduced himself as "Fiery Joe", so called because he can set eleth on fire. Then he demonstrates by setting Sophie on fire. Then he demands that she spank him to punish him.

He declares her beating "heavenly" and leaves to find his brother and sister.

I'm kind of disturbed right now.

[sincere]

Okay, I've met this kid and his family, and I want to stop meeting them.

The only explanation: heavy hallucinatory drugs. I am not charmed or amused or anything.

[sincere]

An NPC informs me that he's finally a knight of Windor just like he always wanted, but it's hard to be happy about it when he thinks about the Royal Knights...

And my thought is, yeah, it's pretty depressing how they slaughtered the king's family, huh?

No. No, it isn't. They were good and true warriors, men of great talent! He can't believe King Richard stripped them of their rank and fired them just for helping Archduke Cedric!

Ughhh, game, stop being stupid righteous at me.

They were his father's guards, and they murdered him and his family to help a traitor.

Richard has done a lot of crazy shit! You don't need to pretend that everything he does is crazy shit.

[sincere]

And his buddy won't stop going on and on about how Cheria is an angel and so beautiful and her smile oh oh Mr. Cheria

These two NPCs know all the things I hate about this game and they're doing them to my face!!

[sincere]

This NPC has a crowd of small children!

...one of them is tiny Presea, and one of them is tiny Anise, and one of them is tiny Patty!

[sincere]

We played hide-and-seek. It was time-consuming!

[sincere]

/watches more NPCs attempt to hook up Cheria and Asbel

Tales of games just refuse to let me make up my own shipping decisions, but they're so bad at helping me.

[sincere]

/rants

Seriously. Asbel/Cheria and Luke/Tear are shoved down my throat every time it reasonably can be and then some, Reid/Farah and Keele/Meredy are the worst possible combinations of those four characters... Lloyd/Colette was the only "official" Tales of pairing that I genuinely enjoyed, and they're from the only game where I can pair the hero up with anyone I want, including the dudes.

Vesperia is the only game in the fucking canon with the balls to not shoehorn in a romance, and people are still such incredible sheep that they will swear up and down that Yuri and Estelle are an official couple and I just missed their incredible romance.

And you know what? I can't blame people. Because they're a good pairing. A much better pairing than the ones the other games are actually trying to sell me on. Your heterosexual fanservice is really poor quality, Tales of.

[sincere]

I gave up tagging pretty early on but the sidequests still took all night. Sigh. I finished the round of sidequests, at least, so tomorrow and this weekend will be full of plot. Full of it!!!

[rainfall]

Happiness is this! /gleemote

/woke up and was right away like, "Liveblog comments! :D"

Pretty please, scared of spoilers

[lynndyre]

I'm really sorry to ask, but could you maybe make your 'starting from' lines less spoilery? I've bought the game but I can't start it yet, and I thought Richard looked like a neat character, and now I'm worried about him without even getting into the game yet.

[sincere]

I... apologize! I have honestly been making a deliberate effort to keep the starting from lines nonspoilery, editing more than once when I was dissatisfied with the balance between lack of spoilers and lack of specifics. The whole reason those lines are there is because I know several people who have done commentaries and they don't put anything above the cuts, so just in the act of determining whether they were commenting on something I had seen, I ended up spoiling myself.

I am very anti-spoiler and I don't read or see anything about a game before it comes out. I knew absolutely nothing about Richard before I started playing. But I wouldn't have considered "A thing happened involving Richard that made me sad" to be a spoiler... That could mean anything, and honestly could apply to about 90% of Tales of characters! The scene I referred to was very minor, although sad.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I really genuinely have made every effort that I could to keep the text of the posts themselves free of spoilers, because I hate being spoiled. But because of that, I really genuinely have no idea how to make them less spoilery. Even now, looking back at my starting from lines, the only one I think might have spoiled anything was Day 6... I'm sorry!! I'll try to keep it in mind, but I can't promise I'll be less spoilery than "[Character name] made me sad after I finished the Strahta plot." ;;;